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THE LAST CONFESSION 

AND 

THE BLIND MOTHER 





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The Last Confession 

AND 

THE BLIND MOTHER 



HALL CAINE 

AUTHOR OF 

“the scapegoat,” “the bondman,” “THE LITTLE MANX 
NATION,” ETC. 









NEW YORK / 3 x 

TAIT, SONS & COMPANY 

Union Square 


v 


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V 




X ^ 


Copyright, 1892, 

BY 

UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY 


[All rights reserved] 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


I. 

Father, do not leave me. Wait ! only a little 
longer. Yon cannot absolve me ? I am not 
penitent ? How can I be penitent ? I do not 
regret it ? How can I regret it ? I would do 
it again ? How could I help but do it again ? 

Yes, yes, I know, I know ! Who knows it 
so well as I ? It is written in the tables of 
God’s law : Thou shalt do no murder ! But 
was it murder? Was it crime? Blood? Yes, 
it was the spilling of blood. Blood will have 
blood, you say. But is there no difference ? 
Hear me out. Let me speak. It is hard to 
remember all now — and here — lying here — but 
listen — only listen. Then tell me if I did 
wrong. No, tell me if God himself will not 
justify me — ay, justify me — though I outraged 


6 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


His edict. Blasphemy? Ah, father, do not 
go ! Father ! 

Speak , my son . I will listen . It is my 
duty. Speak. 

It is less than a year since my health broke 
down, but the soul lives fast, and it seems to 
me like a lifetime. I had overworked myself 
miserably. My life as a physician in London 
had been a hard one, but it was not my practice 
that had wrecked me. How to perform that 
operation on the throat was the beginning of 
my trouble. You know what happened. I 
mastered my problem, and they called the 
operation by my name. It has brought me 
fame ; it has made me rich ; it has saved a 
thousand lives, and will save ten thousand more, 
and yet I — I — for taking one life — one — under 
conditions 

Father, bear with me. I will tell all. My 
nerves are burnt out. Gloom, depression, 
sleeplessness, prostration, sometimes collapse, a 
consuming fire within, a paralyzing frost with- 
out — you know what it is — we call it neuras- 
thenia. 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


7 


I watched the progress of my disease and 
gave myself the customary treatment. Hy- 
giene, diet, drugs, electricity, I tried them all. 
But neither dumb-bells nor Indian clubs, 
neither walking nor riding, neither liberal 
food nor doses of egg and brandy, neither 
musk nor ergot nor antipyrin, neither faradiza- 
tion nor galvanization availed to lift the black 
shades that hung over me day and night, and 
made the gift of life a mockery. I knew why. 
My work possessed me like a fever. I could 
neither do it to my content nor leave it un- 
done. I was drawing water in a sieve. 

My wife sent for Gull. Full well I knew 
what he would advise. It was rest. I must 
take six months’ absolute holiday, and, in order 
to cut myself olf entirely from all temptations 
to mental activity, I must leave London and 
go abroad. Change of scene, of life, and of 
habit, new peoples, new customs, new faiths, 
and a new climate — these separately and to- 
gether, with total cessations of my usual oc- 
cupations, were to banish a long series of 
functional derangements which had for their 


8 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


basis the exhaustion of the sympathetic nervous 
system. 

I was loth to go. Looking back upon my 
condition, I see that my reluctance was justified. 
To launch a creature who was all nerves into 
the perpetual, if trifling vexations of travel was 
a mistake, a folly, a madness. But I did not 
perceive this ; I was thinking only of my home 
and the dear souls from whom I must he 
separated. During the seven years of our 
married life my wife had grown to be more 
than the object of my love. That gentle sooth- 
ing, that soft healing which the mere presence 
of an affectionate woman, who is all strength 
and courage, may bring to a man who is wasted 
by work or worry, my wife’s presence had long 
brought to me, and I shrank from the thought 
of scenes where she could no longer move about 
me, meeting my wishes and anticipating my 
wants. 

This was weakness, and I knew it ; but I 
had another weakness which I did not know. 
My boy, a little son six years of age, the day 
before I set sail, was all the world to me. 


TIIE LAST CONFESSION. 


9 


Paternal love may eat up all the other passions. 
It was so in my case. The tyranny of my 
affection for my only child was even more con- 
stant and unrelenting than the tyranny of my 
work. Nay, the two were one : for out of my 
instinct as a father came my strength as a doc- 
tor. The boy had suffered a throat trouble 
from his birth. When he was a babe I de- 
livered him from a fierce attack of it, and when 
he was four I brought him back from the jaws 
of death. Thus twice I had saved his life, and 
each time that life had become dearer to me. 
But too well I knew that the mischief was 
beaten down, and not conquered. Some day 
it would return with awful virulence. To meet 
that terror I wrought by day and night. No 
slave ever toiled so hard. I denied myself 
rest, curtailed my sleep, and stole from tranquil 
reflection and repose half-hours and quarter- 
hours spent in the carriage going from patient 
to patient. The attack might come suddenly, 
and I must be prepared. I was working against 
time. 

You know what happened. The attack did 


10 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


not come ; mj boy continued well, but my name 
became known and my discovery established. 
The weakness of my own child had given the 
bent to my studies. If I had mastered my 
subject it was my absorbing love of my little 
one that gave me the impulse and direction. 

But I had paid my penalty. My health was 
a wreck, and I must leave everything behind 
me. If it had been possible to take my wife 
and boy along with me, how different the end 
might have been ! Should I be lying here now 
— here on this bed — with you, father, you ? 

W e spent our boy’s birthday with what cheer 
we could command. For my wife it seemed to 
be a day of quiet happiness, hallowed by pre- 
cious memories — the dearest and most delicious 
that a mother ever knew — of the babyhood 
of her boy — his pretty lisp, his foolish prattle, 
his funny little ways and sayings — and sweet- 
ened by the anticipation of the health that was 
to return to me as the result of rest and change. 
The child himself was bright and gamesome, 
and I for my part, gave way to some reckless 
and noisy jollity „ 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


11 


Thus the hours passed until bedtime, and 
then, as I saw the little fellow tucked up in his 
crib, it crossed my mind for a moment that he 
looked less well than usual. Such fancies were 
common to me, and I knew from long expe- 
rience that it was folly to give way to them. 
To do so at that time must have been weakness 
too pitiful for my manhood. I had already 
gone far enough for my own self-respect. To 
my old colleague and fellow-student, Granville 
W enman, I had given elaborate instructions for 
all possible contingencies. 

If this happened he was to do that ; if that 
happened he was to do this. In case of serious 
need he was to communicate with me by the 
swiftest means available, for neither the width 
of the earth nor the wealth of the world, nor the 
loss of all chances of health or yet life, should 
keep me from hastening home if the one hope 
of my heart was in peril. W enman had smiled 
a little as in pity of the morbidity that ran out 
to meet so many dangers. I did not heed his 
good-natured compassion or contempt, whatever 
it was, for I knew he had no children. I had 


12 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


reconciled myself in some measure to my 
absence from home, and before my little man 
was awake in the morning I was gone from the 
house. 

It had been arranged that I should go to 
Morocco. Wenman had suggested that coun- 
try out of regard to the freshness of its life and 
people. The East in the West, the costumes 
of Arabia, the faiths of Mohammed and of 
Moses, a primitive form of government, and 
a social life that might have been proper to 
the land of Canaan in the days of Abraham 
— such had seemed to him and others to be an 
atmosphere of novelty that was likely to bring 
spring and elasticity to the overstretched mind 
and nerves of a victim of the civilization of our 
tumultuous century. But not in all the world 
could fate have ferreted out for me a scene 
more certain to develop the fever and fret of 
my natural temperament. Had the choice 
fallen on any other place, any dead or dying 
country, any corner of God’s earth but that 
blighted and desolate land 

Ah ! bear with me, bear with me. 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


13 


I know it , my son. It is near to my own 
country. My home is in Spain. I came to 
your England from Seville. Go on. 

I sailed to Gibraltar by a P. and 0. steamer 
from Tilbury, and the tender that took my 
wife back to the railway-pier left little in my 
new condition to interest me. You know what 
it is to leave home in search of health. If 
hope is before you, regret is behind. When I 
stood on the upper deck that night, alone, and 
watched the light of the Eddystone dying down 
over the dark waters, it seemed to me that suc- 
cess had no solace, and fame no balm, and 
riches no safety or content. One reflection 
alone sufficed to reconcile me to where I was — 
the work that had brought me there was done 
neither for fame nor for riches, but at the 
prompting of the best of all earthly passions — 
or what seemed to be the best. 

Three days passed, and beyond casual words 
I had spoken to no one on the ship. But on 
the fourth day, as we sailed within sight of 
Finisterre in a calm sea, having crossed the 
Bay with comfort, the word went round that a 


14 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


storm-signal was hoisted on the cape. No one 
who has gone through an experience such as 
that is likely to forget it. Everybody on deck, 
the blanched faces, the hushed voices, the quick 
whispers, the eager glances around, the interro- 
gations of the officers on duty, and their ban- 
tering answers belied by their anxious looks, 
then the darkening sky, the freshening breeze, 
the lowering horizon, the tingling gloomy at- 
mosphere creeping down from the mast-heads, 
and the air of the whole ship, above and below, 
charged, as it were, with sudden electricity. 
It is like nothing else in life except the bugle- 
call in camp, telling those who lie smoking and 
drinking about the fires that the enemy is com- 
ing, and is near. 

I was standing on the quarter-deck watching 
the Lascars reefing sails, battening down the 
hatches, tarpauling them, and making every- 
thing snug, when a fellow-passenger whom I 
had not observed before stepped up and spoke. 
His remark was a casual one, and it has gone 
from my memory. I think it had reference to 
the native seamen, and was meant as a jest 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


15 


upon their lumbering slowness, which sug- 
gested pitiful thoughts to him of what their 
capacity must be in a storm. But the air of 
the man much more than his words aroused 
and arrested my attention. It was that of one 
whose spirits had been quickened by the new 
sense of danger. He laughed, his eyes sparkled, 
his tongue rolled out his light remarks with a 
visible relish. I looked at the man and saw 
that he had the soul of a war-horse. Tall, 
slight, dark, handsome, with bushy beard, 
quivering nostrils, mobile mouth, and eyes of 
fire, alive in every fibre, and full of unconquer- 
able energy. He appeared to be a man of 
thirty to thirty-five, but proved to be no more 
than four-and-twenty. I learned afterwards 
that he was an American, and was travelling 
for love of adventure. 

That night we flew six hours before the 
storm, but it overtook our ship at last. What 
befell us then in the darkness of that rock- 
bound coast I did not know until morning. 
Can you believe it ? I took my usual dose of 
a drug prescribed to me for insomnia, and lay 


16 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


down to sleep. When I went up on deck in 
the late dawn of the following day — the time 
was the spring — the wind had slackened, and 
the ship was rolling and swinging along in a 
sea that could not be heard above the beat and 
thud of the engines. Only the memory of 
last night’s tempest lay around in sullen wave 
and sky — only there, and in the quarters 
down below of the native seamen of our 
ship. 

The first face I encountered was that of the 
American. He had been on deck all night, 
and he told me what had happened. Through 
the dark hours the storm had been terrible, 
and when the first dead light of dawn had 
crept across from the east the ship had been 
still tossing in great white billows. Just then 
a number of Lascars had been ordered aloft 
on some urgent duty — I know not what — and 
a sudden gust had swept one of them from a 
cross-tree into the sea. Efforts had been made 
to rescue him, the engines had been reversed, 
boats put out and life-buoys thrown into the 
water, but all in vain. The man had been 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


17 


swept away ; he was gone and the ship had 
steamed on. 

The disaster saddened me inexpressibly. I 
could see the Lascar fall from the rigging, 
catch the agonizing glance of the white eyes 
in his black face as he was swept past on the 
crest of a wave, and watch his outstretched 
arms as he sank to his death down and down 
and down. It seemed to me an iniquity that 
while this had happened I had slept. Perhaps 
the oyer-sensitive condition of my nerves was 
at fault, but indeed I felt that, in his way, in 
his degree, within the measure of his possibili- 
ties, that poor fellow of another skin, another 
tongue, with whom I had exchanged no word 
of greeting, had that day given his life for my 
life. 

How much of such emotion I expressed at 
the time it is hard to remember now, but that 
the American gathered the bent of my feel- 
ings was clear to me by the pains he was at to 
show that they were uncalled for, and unnatu- 
ral, and false. What was life ? I had set too 
great a store by it. The modern reverence 


18 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


for life was eating away the finest instincts of 
man’s nature. Life was not the most sacred 
of our possessions. Duty, justice, truth, these 
were higher things. 

So he talked that day and the next until, 
from thoughts of the loss of the Lascar, we 
had drifted far into wider and more perilous 
speculations. The American held to his canon. 
War was often better than peace, and open 
massacre than corrupt tranquillity. W e 
wanted some of the robust spirit of the Middle 
Ages in these our piping days. The talk 
turned on the persecution of the Jews in 
Russia. The American defended it — a stern 
people was purging itself of an alien element 
which, like an interminate tapeworm, had been 
preying on its vitals. The remedy was drastic 
but necessary ; life was lost, but also life was 
saved. 

Then coming to closer quarters we talked 
of murder. The American held to the doctrine 
of Sterne. It was a hard case that the laws of 
the modern world should not have made any 
manner of difference between murdering an 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


19 


honest man and only executing a scoundrel. 
These things should always be rated cid valorem . 
As for blood spilt in self-defence, it was folly 
to talk of it as crime. Even the laws of my 
own effeminate land justified the man who 
struck down the arm that was raised to kill 
him ; and the mind that reckoned such an act 
as an offence was morbid and diseased. 

Such opinions were repugnant to me, and I 
tried to resist them. There was a sanctity 
about human life which no man should dare to 
outrage. God gave it, and only God should 
take it away. As for the government of the 
world, let it be for better or for worse, it was 
in God’s hands, and God required the help of 
no man. 

My resistance was useless. The American 
held to his doctrine ; it was good to take life 
in a good cause, and if it was good for the 
nation, it was good for the individual man. 
The end was all. 

I fenced these statements with what force I 
could command, and I knew not how strongly 
my adversary had assailed me. Now, I know 


20 


THE LAST CONFESSION . 


too well that his opinions sank deep into my 
soul. Only too well I know it now — now 
that 

W e arrived at Gibraltar the following morn- 
ing, and going up on deck in the empty void 
of air that follows on the sudden stopping of a 
ship’s engines, I found the American, amid a 
group of swarthy Gibraltarians, bargaining for 
a boat to take him to the Mole. It turned out 
that he was going to Morocco also, and we 
hired a boat together. 

The morning was clear' and cold ; the great 
broad rock looked whiter and starker and more 
like a gigantic oyster-shell than ever against 
the blue of the sky. There would be no 
steamer for Tangier until the following day, 
and we were to put up at the Spanish hotel 
called the Calpe. 

Immediately on landing I made my way to 
the post-office to despatch a telegram home 
announcing my arrival, and there I found two 
letters, which, having come overland, arrived in 
advance of me. One of them was from Wen- 
man, telling me that he had called at Wimpole 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


21 


Street tlie morning after my departure and 
found all well at my house ; and also enclosing 
a resolution of thanks and congratulation from 
my colleagues of the College of Surgeons in 
relation to my recent labors, which were said 
to be “ memorable in the cause of humanity 
and science.” 

The other letter was from my wife, a sweet, 
affectionate little note, cheerful yet tender, 
written on her return from Tilbury, hinting 
that the dear old house looked just a trifle 
empty and as if somehow it missed something, 
but that our boy was up and happy with a new 
toy that I had left for him as a consolation on 
his awakening — a great elephant that worked 
its trunk and roared. “ I have just asked our 
darling,” wrote my wife, “what message he 
would like to send you. ‘ Tell papa/ he an- 
swers, ‘Fm all right, and Jumbo’s all right, 
and is he all right, and will he come home werry 
quick, and see him grunting ? ’ ” 

That night at the Calpe I had some further 
talk with the American. Young as he was he 
had been a great Eastern traveller. Egypt, 


22 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


Arabia, Syria, the Holy Land — he knew them 
all. For his forthcoming sojourn in Morocco 
he had prepared himself with elaborate care. 
The literature of travel in Barbary is volumi- 
nous, but he had gone through the best of it. 
With the faith of Islam he had long been fa- 
miliar, and of the corrupt and tyranical form of 
government of Mulai el Hassan and his kaids 
and kadis he had an intimate knowledge. He 
had even studied the language of the Moorish 
people — the Moroccan Arabic, which is a dia- 
lect of the language of the Koran — and so that 
he might hold intercourse with the Sephardic 
Jews also, who people the Mellahs of Morocco, 
he had mastered the Spanish language as well. 

This extensive equipment, sufficient to start 
a crusade or to make a revolution, was meant 
to do more than provide him with adventure. 
His intention was to see the country and its 
customs, to observe the manners of the people 
and the ordinances of their religion. u I shall 
get into the palaces and the prisons of the 
Kasbahs,” he said ; “ yes, and the mosques and 
the saints’ houses, and the harems also.” 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


23 


Little as I knew then of the Moors and their 
country, I foresaw the dangers of such an enter- 
prise, and I warned him against it. “ You will 
get yourself into awkward corners,” I said. 

66 Yes/’ he said, “ and I shall get myself out 
of them.” 

I remembered his doctrine propounded on 
the ship, and I saw that he was a man of reso- 
lution, but I said, “ Kemember, you are going 
to the land of this people for amusement alone. 
It is not necessity that thrusts you upon their 
prejudice, their superstition, then" fanaticism.” 

“ True,” he said, “ hut if I get into trouble 
among them it will not he my amusements hut 
my liberty or my life that will be in danger.” 

“ Then in such a case you will stick at noth- 
ing to plough your way out ? ” 

u Nothing.” 

I laughed, for my mind refused to believe 
him, and we laughed noisily together, with vis- 
ions of bloody daggers before the eyes of both. 

Father, my heart believed : silently, secretly, 
unconsciously, it drank in the poison of his 
thought — drank it in — ay 


24 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


Next day, about noon, we sailed for Tangier. 
Our ship was the Jackal, a little old iron steam- 
tug, battered by time and tempest, clamped and 
stayed at every side, and just holding together 
as by the grace of God. The storm which we 
had outraced from Finisterre had now doubled 
Cape St. Vincent, and the sea was rolling 
heavily in the Straits. W e saw nothing of this 
until we had left the bay and were standing 
out from Tarifa ; nor would it be worthy of 
mention now but that it gave me my first real 
understanding of the tremendous hold that the 
faith or the fanaticism of the Moorish people 
— call it what you will — has upon their char- 
acters and lives. 

The channel at that point is less than twenty 
miles wide, but we were more than five hours 
crossing it. Our little crazy craft labored ter- 
ribly in the huge breakers that swept inwards 
from the Atlantic. Pitching until the fore- 
deck was covered, rolling until her boats dipped 
in the water, creaking, shuddering, leaping, she 
had enough to do to keep afloat. 

With the American I occupied the bridge 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


25 


between the paddle-boxes, which served as a 
saloon for first-class passengers ; and below us 
in the open hold of the after-deck a number of 
Moors sat huddled together among cattle and 
sheep and baskets of fowls. They were pil- 
grims, Hadjis, returning from Mecca by way 
of Gibraltar, and their behavior during the 
passage was marvellous in its callousness to the 
sense of peril. They wrangled, quarrelled, 
snarled at each other, embraced, kissed, laughed 
together, made futile attempts to smoke their 
keef-pipes, and quarrelled, barked, and bleated 
again. 

“ Surely,” I said, “ these people are either 
wondrously brave or they have no sense of the 
solemnity of death.” 

“ Neither,” said the American; “they are 
merely fatalists by virtue of their faith. ‘ If it 
is not now, it is to come ; if it is not to come, 
then it is now.’ ” 

“ There is a sort of bravery in that,” I an- 
swered. 

“ And cowardice, too,” said the American. 

The night had closed in when we dropped 


26 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


anchor by the ruins of the Mole at Tangier, 
and I saw no more of the white town than I 
had seen of it from the Straits. But if my eyes 
failed in the darkness my other senses served 
me only too well. The shrieking and yelping 
of the boatloads of Moors and negroes who 
clambered aboard to relieve us of our luggage, 
the stench of the town sewers that emptied into 
the hay — these were my first impressions of the 
gateway to the home of Islam. 

The American went through the turmoil 
with composure and an air of command, and 
having seen to my belongings as well as his 
own, passing them through the open office at 
the water-gate, where two solemn Moors in 
white sat by the light of candles, in the receipt 
of customs, he parted from me at the foot of 
the street that begins with the Grand Mosque, 
and is the main artery of the town, for he had 
written for rooms to the hotel called the Villa 
de France, and I, before leaving England, had 
done the same to the hotel called the Conti- 
nental. 

Thither I was led by a barefooted courier in 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


27 


white jellab and red tarboosh, amid sights and 
sounds of fascinating strangeness : the low 
drone of men’s voices singing their evening 
prayers in the mosques, the tinkling of the hells 
of men selling water out of goats’ skins, the 
“ Allah ” of blind beggars crouching at the 
gates, the “ Arrah ” of the mule drivers, and 
the hooded shapes going by in the gloom or 
squatting in the red glare of the cafes without 
windows or doors and open to the streets. 

I met the American in the Sok — the market- 
place — the following day, and he took me up 
to his hotel to see some native costumes which 
he had bought by way of preparations for his 
enterprise. They were haiks and soolhams, 
jellabs, kaftans, slippers, rosaries, korans, sashes, 
satchels, turbans, and tarbooshes — blue, white, 
yellow, and red — all right and none too new, 
for he had purchased them not at the bazaars, 
but from the son of a learned Moor, a Taleb, 
who had been cast into a prison by a usurer Jew. 

“ In these,” said he, “ I mean to go every- 
where, and I’ll defy the devil himself to detect 


28 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


“ Take care,” I said, 66 take care.” 

He laughed and asked me what my own plans 
were. I told him that I would remain in Tan- 
gier until I received letters from home, and 
then push on towards Fez. 

“ I’ll see you there,” he said ; “ hut if I do 
not hail you, please do not know me. Good- 
bye.” 

“ Good-bye,” I said, and so we parted. 

I stayed ten days longer in Tangier, absorbed 
in many reflections, of which the strangest were 
these two : first, that the Moors were the most 
religious people in the world, and next, that 
they were the most wickedly irreligious and 
basely immoral race on God’s earth. I was 
prompted to the one by observations of the 
large part which Allah appears to play in all 
affairs of Moorish life, and to the other by clear 
proof of the much larger part which the devil 
enacts in Allah’s garments. On the one side 
prayers, prayers, prayers, the moodden, the 
moodden, the moodden, the mosque, the mosque, 
the mosque. “ Allah ” in the mouths of the 
beggars, “ Allah ” from the lips of the mer- 


TEE LAST CONFESSION. 


29 


chants, “ Mohammed ” on the inscriptions at 
the gate, the u Koran ” on the scalfs hung out 
at the bazaars and on the satchels hawked in 
the streets. And on the other side shameless 
lying, cheating, usury, buying and selling of 
justice, cruelty and inhumanity ; raw sores on 
the backs of the asses, blood in the streets, blood, 
blood, blood everywhere and secret corruption 
indescribable. 

Nevertheless I concluded that my nervous 
malady must have given me the dark glasses 
through which everything looked so foul, and I 
resolved, in the interests of health, to push on 
towards Fez as soon as letters arrived from 
home assuring me that all were well and happy 
there. 

But no letters came, and at the arrival of 
every fresh mail from Cadiz and from Gibraltar 
my impatience increased. At length I decided 
to wait no longer, and, leaving instructions that 
my letters should be sent on after me to the 
capital, I called on the English Consul for such 
official documents as were needful for my 
journey. 


30 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


When these had been produced from the 
Kasbah, and I was equipped for travel, the 
Consul inquired of me how I liked the Moors 
and their country. I described my conflicting 
impressions, and he said both were right in 
tlieir several ways. 

“ The religion of the Moor/’ said he, u is 
genuine of its kind, though it does not put an 
end to the vilest Government on earth and the 
most loathsome immoralities ever practised by 
man. Islam is a sacred thing to him. He is 
proud of it, jealous of it, and prepared to die 
for it. Half his hatred of the unbeliever is fear 
that the Nazarene or the Jew is eager to show 
his faith some dishonor. And that,” added 
the Consul, “ reminds me to offer you one word 
of warning : avoid the very shadow of offence 
to the religion of these people ; do not pry into 
their beliefs ; do not take note of their ordi- 
nances ; pass their mosques and saints’ houses 
with downcast eyes, if need be ; in a word, let 
Islam alone.” 

I thanked him for his counsel, and, remember- 
ing the American, I inquired what the penalty 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


31 


would be if a foreign subject offended the re- 
ligion of this people. The Consul lifted his 
eyebrows and shoulders together, with an elo- 
quence of reply that required no words. 

“ But might not a stranger/’ I asked, “ do 
so unwittingly ? ” 

“ Truly,” he answered, “and so much the 
worse for his ignorance.” 

“Is British life, then,” I said, “at the 
mercy of the first ruffian with a dagger ? Is 
there no power in solemn treaties ? ” 

“ What are treaties,” he said, “ against fan- 
aticism ? Give the one a wide berth and 
you’ll have small need for the other.” 

After that he told me something of certain 
claims just settled for long imprisonment in- 
flicted by the Moorish authorities on men trad- 
ing under the protection of the British flag. 
It was an abject story of barbarous cruelty, 
broken health, shattered lives, and wrecked 
homes, atoned for after weary procrastination, 
in the manner of all Oriental courts, by a 
sorry money payment. The moral of it all 
was conveyed by the Consul in the one word 


32 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


with which he parted from me at his gate : 
66 Respect the fanaticism of these fanatics/’ he 
said, “ as you would value your liberty or your 
life, and keep out of a Moorish prison — re- 
member that, remember that ! ” 

I did remember it. Every day of my trav- 
els I remembered it. I remembered it at the 
most awful moment of my life. If I had not 
remembered it then, should I be lying here now 
with that — with that — behind me ! Ah, wait, 
wait ! 

Little did I expect when I left the Consul to 
light so soon upon a terrible illustration of his 
words. With my guide and interpreter, a 
Moorish soldier lent to me by the authorities 
in return for two pesetas (one shilling and 
ninepence) a day, I strolled into the greater 
Sok, the market-place outside the walls. It 
was Friday, the holy day of the Moslems, 
somewhere between one and two o’clock in the 
afternoon, when the body of the Moors having 
newly returned from their one-hour observ- 
ances in the mosques, had resumed, according 
to their wont, their usual occupations. The 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


83 


day was fine and warm, a bright sun was shin- 
ing, and the Sok at the time when we entered 
it was a various and animated scene. 

Dense crowds of hooded figures, clad chiefly 
in white — soiled or dirty white — men in j el- 
labs, women enshrouded in blankets, bare- 
footed girls, boys with shaven polls, water- 
-carriers with their tinkling bells, snake-charm- 
ers, story-tellers, jugglers, preachers, and then 
donkeys, nosing their way through the throng, 
mules lifting their necks above the people’s 
heads, and camels munching oats and fighting 
— it was a wilderness of writhing forms and a 
babel of shrieking noises. 

With my loquacious Moor I pushed my way 
along past booths and stalls until I came to a 
whitewashed structure with a white flag float- 
ing over it, that stood near the middle of the 
market-place. It was a roofless place, about 
fifteen feet square, and something like a little 
sheepfold, but having higher walls. Through 
the open doorway I saw an inner inclosure, 
out of which a man came forward. He was 
a wild-eyed creature in tattered garments, 


34 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


and dirty, dishevelled, and malevolent of face. 

“ See,” said my guide, “ see, my lord, a 
Moorish saint’s house. Look at the flag. So 
shall my lord know a saint’s house. Here rest 
the bones of Sidi Gali, and that is the saint 
that guards them. A holy man, yes, a holy 
man. Moslems pay him tribute. Sacred 
place, yes, sacred. No Nazarene may enter it. 
But Moslems, yes, Moslems may fly here for 
sanctuary. Life to the Moslem, death to the 
Nazarene. So it is.” 

My soldier was rattling on in this way when 
I saw coming in the sunlight down the hillside 
of which the Sdk is the foot a company of some 
eight or ten men, whose dress and complexion 
were unlike those of the people gathered there. 
They were a band of warlike persons, swarthy, 
tall, lithe, sinewy, with heads clean shaven save 
for one long lock that hung from the crown, 
each carrying a gun with barrel of prodigious 
length upon his shoulder, and also armed with 
a long naked Reefian knife stuck in the scarf 
that served him for a belt. 

They were Berbers, the descendants of the 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


35 


race that peopled Barbary before the Moors set 
foot in it, between whom and the Moors there 
is a long-continued, suppressed, but ineradicable 
enmity. From tlieir mountain homes these men 
had come to the town that day on their pleasure 
or their business, and as they entered it they 
were at no pains to conceal their contenpt for 
the townspeople and their doings. 

Swaggering along with long strides, they 
whooped and laughed and ploughed their way 
through the crowd over bread and vegetables 
spread out on the ground, and the people fell 
back before them with muttered curses until 
they were come near to the saint’s house, beside 
which I myself with my guide was standing. 
Then I saw that the keeper of the saint’s house, 
the half-distraught creature whom I had just 
observed, was spitting out at them some bitter 
and venomous words. 

Clearly they all heard him, and most of them 
laughed derisively and pushed on. But one of 
the number — a young Berber with eyes of fire 
— drew up suddenly and made some answer in 
hot and rapid words. The man of the saint’s 


36 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


house spoke again, showing his teeth as he did 
so in a horrible grin ; and at the next instant, 
almost quicker than my eyes could follow the 
swift movement of his hands, the Berber had 
plucked his long knife from his belt and 
plunged it into the keeper’ s breast. 

I saw it all. The man fell at my feet, and 
was dead in an instant. In another moment the 
police of the market had laid hold of the mur- 
derer, and he was being hauled off to his trial. 
u Come,” whispered my guide, and he led me 
by short cuts through the narrow lanes to the 
Kasbali. 

In an open alcove of the castle I found two 
men in stainless blue jellabs and spotless white 
turbans, squatting on rush mats at either foot of 
the horse-shoe arch. These were the judges, 
the Kadi and his Khalifa, sitting in session in 
the hall of justice. 

There was a tumult of many voices and of 
hurrying feet ; and presently the police entered, 
holding their prisoner between them, and 
followed by a vast concourse of townspeople. 
I held my ground in front of the alcove ; the 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


37 


Berber was brought up near to my side, and I 
saw and heard all. 

“ This man,” said one of the police, “ killed 
so-and-so, of Sidi Gali’s saint’s 1101186.” 
u When ? ” said the Kadi. 

“ This moment,” said the police. 

“ How ? ” said the Kadi. 
a With this knife,” said the police. 

The knife, stained, and still wet, was handed 
to the judge. He shook it, and asked the 
prisoner one question : “ Why ? ” 

Then the Berber flung himself on his knees 
— his shaven head brushed my hand — and 
began to plead extenuating circumstances. 
“ It is true, my lord, I killed him, but he called 

me dog and infidel, and spat at me ” 

The Kadi gave back the knife and waved 
his hand. “ Take him away,” he said. 

That was all, as my guide interpreted it. 
u Come,” he whispered again, and he led me by 
a passage into a sort of closet where a man lay 
on a mattress. This was the porch to the 
prison, and the man on the mattress was the 
jailer. In one wall there was a low door, 


38 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


barred and clamped with iron, and having a 
round peephole grated across. 

At the next instant the police brought in 
their prisoner. The jailer rattled a big key in 
the lock, the low door swung open, I saw with- 
in a dark den full of ghostly figures dragging 
chains at their ankles ; a foul stench came out 
of it, the prisoner bent his head and was 
pushed in, the door slammed back — and that 
was the end. Everything occurred in no more 
time than it takes to tell it. 

“ Is that all his trial ? ” I asked. 

“ All,” said my guide. 

“ How long will he lie there ? ” 

u Until death.” 

“ But,” I said, “ I have heard that a Kadi 
of your country may be bribed to liberate a 
murderer.” 

“ All, my lord is right,” said my guide, 
“ but not the murderer of a saint.” 

Less than five minutes before I had seen the 
stalwart young Berber swaggering down the 
hillside in the afternoon sunshine. Now he 
was in the gloom of the noisome dungeon, with 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


39 


no hope of ever again looking upon the light 
of day, doomed to drag out an existence worse 
than death, and all for what ? For taking 
life ? No, no, no — life in that land is cheap, 
cheaper than it ever was in the Middle Ages 
— but for doing dishonor to a superstition of 
the faith of Islam. 

I remembered the American, and shuddered 
at the sight of this summary justice. Next 
morning, as my tentmen and muleteers were 
making ready to set out for Fez, my soldier 
guide brought me a letter which had come by 
the French steamer by way of Malaga. It was 
from home — a brief note from my wife, with 
no explanation of her prolonged silence, merely 
saying that all was as usual at Wimpole Street, 
and not mentioning our boy at all. The omis- 
sion troubled me, the brevity and baldness of 
the message filled me with vague concern, and 
I had half a mind to delay my inland journey. 
W ould that I had done so ! W ould that I had ! 
Oh, would that I had ! 

Terrible, my son, terrible ! A blighted 
and desolated land . But even worse than its 



40 


THE LAST CONFESSION . 


own people are the renegades it takes from 
mine. Ah , I knew one such long ago. An 
outcast , a pariah , a shedder of blood , an 
apostate. But go on, go on. 


THE LAST CONFESSION . 


41 


II. 

Father, what voice was it that rang in my 
ears and cried, “ Stay, do not travel ; all your 
past from the beginning until to-day, all your 
future from to-day until the end, hangs on 
your action now ; go, and your past is a waste, 
your fame a mockery, your success a reproach ; 
remain, and your future is peace and happi- 
ness and content ! ” What voice, father, what 
voice ? 

I shut my ears to it, and six days afterwards 
I arrived at Fez. My journey had impressed 
two facts upon my mind with startling vivid- 
ness ; first, that the Moor would stick at noth- 
ing in his jealousy of the honor of his faith, 
and next, that I was myself a changed and 
coarsened man. I was reminded of the one 
when in El Kassar I saw an old Jew beaten in 
the open streets because he had not removed 
his slippers and walked barefoot as he passed 


42 


THE LAST CONFESSION . 


the front of a mosque ; and again in W azzan, 
when I witnessed the welcome given to the 
Grand Shereef on his return from his home in 
Tangier to his house in the capital of his prov- 
ince. The Jew was the chief usurer of the 
town, and had half the Moorish inhabitants in 
his toils ; yet his commercial power had counted 
for nothing against the honor of Islam. “ 1 ” 
said lie to me that night in the Jewish inn, the 
Fondak, “I, who could clap every man of them 
in the Kasbah, and their masters with them, 
for moneys they owe me, I to be treated like a 
dog by these scurvy sons of Ishmael — God of 
Jacob ! ” The Grand Shereef was a drunkard, 
a gamester, and worse. There was no ordi- 
nance of Mohammed which he had not openly 
outraged, yet because he stood to the people as 
the descendant of the Prophet, and the father 
of the faith, they grovelled on the ground be- 
fore him and kissed his robes, his knees, his 
feet, his stirrups, and the big hoofs of the 
horse that carried him. As for myself, I real- 
ized that the atmosphere of the country had 
corrupted me, when I took out from my bag- 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


43 


gage a curved knife in its silver-mounted sheath, 
which I had bought of a hawker at Tangier, 
and fixed it prominently in the belt of my Nor- 
folk jacket. 

The morning after my arrival in Fez I en- 
countered my American companion of the voy- 
age. Our meeting was a strange one. I had 
rambled aimlessly with my guide through the 
new town into the old until I had lighted by 
chance upon the slave market in front of the 
ruins of the ancient Grand Mosque, and upon 
a human auction which was then proceeding. 
No scene so full of shame had I ever beheld, 
but the fascination of the spectacle held me, 
and I stood and watched and listened. The 
slave being sold was a black girl, and she was 
beautiful according to the standard of her skin, 
bareheaded, barefooted, and clad as lightly 
over her body as decency allowed, so as to re- 
veal the utmost of her charms. 

“ Now, brothers/’ cried the salesman, “ look, 
see,” (pinching the gill’s naked arms and roll- 
ing his jewelled fingers from her chin down- 
wards over her bare neck on to her bosom) 


44 


TIIE LAST CONFESSION. 


“ sound of wind and limb, and with rosy lips, 
fit for the kisses of a king — how much ? ” 

“ A hundred dollars/’ cried a voice out of 
the crowd. I thought I had heard the voice 
before, and looked up to see who had spoken. 
It was a tall man with hai'k over his turban, 
and blue selam on top of a yellow kaftan. 

“ A hundred dollars offered,” cried the sales- 
man, “ only a hundred. Brothers, now’s the 
chance for all true believers.” 

u A hundred and five,” cried another voice. 
“ A hundred and ten.” 

“ A hundred and fifteen.” 

“ A hundred and fifteen for this jewel of a 
girl/’ cried the salesman. “It’s giving her 
away, brothers. By the prophets, if you are 
not quick I’ll keep her for myself. Come, 
look at her, Sidi. Isn’t she good enough for 
a sultan ? The Prophet (God rest him) would 
have leapt at her. He loved sweet women as 
much as he loved sweet odors. Now, for the 
third and last time — how much ? Remember, 
I guarantee her seventeen years of age, sound, 
strong, plump, and sweet.” 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


45 


“ A hundred and twenty/’ cried the voice I 
had heard first. I looked up at the speaker 
again. It was the American in his Moorish cos- 
tume. 

I could hear no more of the sickening spec- 
tacle, and as I turned aside with my interpreter, 
I was conscious that my companion of the voy- 
age was following me. When we came to some 
dark arches that divided Old Fez from New Fez 
the American spoke, and I sent my interpreter 
ahead. 

“ You see I am giving myself full tether in 
this execrable land, ” he said. 

“ Indeed you are,” I answered. 

“ W ell, as the Romans in Rome, you know — 
it was what I came for,” he said. 

“ Take care,” I replied. “ Take care.” 

He drew up shortly and said, “ By the way, 
I ought to be ashamed to meet you.” 

I thought he ought, but for courtesy I asked 
him why. 

“ Because,” he said, “ I have failed to act 
up to my principles.” 

u In what ? ” I inquired. 

1 


v 


46 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


“ In saving the life of a scoundrel at the risk 
of my own/’ he answered. 

Then he told me his story. “ I left Tangier/’ 
he said, “ with four men in my caravan, but it 
did not suit me to bring them into Fez, so I 
dismissed them a day’s ride from here, paying 
in full for the whole journey and making a pres- 
ent over. My generosity was a blunder. The 
Moor cannot comprehend an act of disinterested 
kindness, and I saw the ruffians lay their heads 
together to find out what it could mean. Three 
of them gave it up and went off home, hut the 
fourth determined to follow the trace. His 
name was Larby.” 

Larby f El Arby , my son ? Did you 
say El Arby f Of Tangier , too ? A 
Moor f Or was he a Spanish renegade 
turned Muslemf But no matter — no mat- 
ter. 

“He was my guide,” said the American, 
“ and a most brazen hypocrite, always cheating 
me. I let him do so, it amused me — always 
lying to my face, and always fumbling his beads 


THE LAST CONFESSION . 


47 


— 6 God forgive me ! God forgive me ’ — an ap- 
propriate penance, yon know the way of it. 
‘ Peace, Sidi ! ’ said the rascal : ‘ Farewell ! 
Allah send we meet in Paradise/ But the devil 
meant that we should meet before that. We 
have met. It was a hot moment. Do you 
know the Hamadsha Mosque ? It is a place in 
a side street sacred to the preaching of a fana- 
tical follower of one Sidi Ali bin Hamdoosh, and 
to certain wild dances executed in a glass-and- 
fire eating frenzy. I thought I should like to 
hear a Moorish D. L. Moody, and one day I 
went there. As I was going in I met a man 
coming out. It was Larby. ‘ Beeba ! ’ he 
whispered, with a tragic start — that was his own 
name for me on the journey. * Keep your 
tongue between your teeth/ I whispered back. 
‘ I was Beeba yesterday, to-day I’m Sidi Mo- 
hammed.’ Then I entered, I spread my prayer- 
mat, chanted my first Sura, listened to a lusty 
sermon, and came out. There, as I expected, 
in the blind lane leading from the Hamadsha to 
the town was Larby waiting for me. ‘ Beeba/ 
said he, with a grin, 6 you play a double hand 


48 


THE LAST CONFESSION . 


of cards.’ ‘ Then/ said I, c take care I don’t 
trump your trick.’ The rascal had thought I 
might bribe him, and when he knew that I 
would not I saw murder in his face. He had 
conceived the idea of betraying me at the next 
opportunity. At that moment he was surely 
aiming at my life as if he had drawn his dagger 
and stabbed me. It was then that I disgraced 
my principles.” 

“ How ? how ? ” I said, though truly I had 
little need to ask. 

“ We were alone, I tell you, in a blind lane.” 
said the American ; “ but I remembered stories 
the man had told me of his children. ‘ Little 
Hoolia/ he called his daughter, a pretty, black- 
eyed mite of six, who always watched for him 
when he was away.” 

I was breaking into perspiration. “ Do you 
mean,” I said, “ that you should have ” 

“ I mean that I should have killed the scoun- 
drel there and then ! ” said the American. 

“ God forbid it ! ” I cried, and my hair 
rose from my scalp in horror. 

“ Why not ? ” said the American. “ It 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


49 


would have been an act of self-defence . The 
man meant to kill me. He will kill me still if 
I give him the chance. What is the difference 
between murder in a moment and murder after 
five, ten, fifteen, twenty days ? Only that one 
is murder in hot blood and haste and the other 
is murder in cold blood and by stealth. Is it 
life that you think so precious ? Then, why 
should I value his life more than I value my 
own ? ” 

I shivered, and could say nothing. 

“ You think me a monster,” said the Ameri- 
can, “ but remember, since we left England the 
atmosphere has changed.” 

“ Remember, too,” I said, “ that this man 
can do you no harm unless you intrude your- 
self upon his superstitions again. Leave the 
country immediately; depend upon it, he is 
following you.” 

“ That’s not possible,” said the American, 
u for I am following him . Until I come up 
with him I can do nothing, and my existence 
is not worth a pin’s purchase.” 

I shuddered, and we parted. My mind told 
4 


? 


50 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


me that he was right, hut my heart clamored 
above the voice of reason and said, “ You 
could not do it, no, not to save a hundred lives/’ 

Ah, father, how little we know ourselves — 
how little, oh, how little ! When I think that 
he shrank back — he who held life so cheap — 
while I — I who held it so dear, so sacred, so 
god-like 

Bear with me ; I will tell all. 

I met the American at intervals during the 
next six days. We did not often speak, but 
as we passed in the streets — he alone, I always 
with my loquacious interpreter — I observed 
with dread the change that the shadow of 
death hanging over a man’s head can bring to 
pass in his face and manner. He grew thin 
and sallow and wild-eyed. One day he stopped 
me, and said : “ I know now what your Buck- 
shot Forster died of,” and then he went on 
without another word. 

But about ten days after our first meeting 
in the slave market he stopped me again, and 
said, quite cheerfully : “ He has gone home — 
I’m satisfied of that now.” 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


51 


“ Thank God ! ” I answered involuntarily. 

u Ah,” lie said, with a twinkle of the eye, 
u who says that a man must hang up his 
humanity on the peg with his hat in the hos- 
pital hall when he goes to be a surgeon ? If 
the poet Keats had got over the first shock to 
his sensibilities, he might have been the greatest 
surgeon of his day.” 

66 You’ll be more careful in future,” I said, 
“ not to cross the fanaticism of these fanatics ? ” 

He smiled, and asked if I knew the Karueein 
Mosque. I told him I had seen it. 

“ It is the greatest in Morocco,” he said, 
“ The Moors say the inner court stands on 
eight hundred pillars. I don’t believe them, 
and I mean to see for myself.” 

I found it useless to protest, and he went 
his way, laughing at my blanched and bewil- 
dered face. “ That man,” I thought, “ is fit 
to be the hero of a tragedy, and he is wasting 
himself on a farce.” 

Meanwhile, I had a shadow over my own 
life which would not lift. That letter which I 
had received from home at the moment of 


52 


TI1E LAST CONFESSION. 


leaving Tangier had haunted me throughout 
the journey. Its brevity, its insufficiency, its 
delay, and above all its conspicuous omission of 
all mention of our hoy had given rise to end- 
less speculation. Every dark possibility that 
fancy could devise had risen before me by way 
of explanation. I despised myself for such 
weakness, hut self -contempt did nothing to 
allay my vague fears. The child was ill ; I 
knew it ; I felt it ; I could swear to it as cer- 
tainly as if my ears could hear the labored 
breathing in his throat. 

Nevertheless I went on ; so much did my 
philosophy do for me. But when I got to 
Fez I walked straightway to the English j>ost- 
office to see if there was a letter awaiting me. 
Of course there was no letter there. I had 
not reflected that I had come direct from the 
port through which the mails had to pass, and 
that if the postal courier had gone by me on 
the road I must have seen him, which I had 
not. 

I was ashamed before my own conscious- 
ness, but, all the same, the post-office saw me 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


53 


every day. Whatever the direction that I 
took with my interpreter, it led towards that 
destination in the end. And whatever the 
subject of his ceaseless gabble — a very deluge 
of words — it was forced to come round at last 
to the times and seasons of the mails from 
England. These were bi-weekly, with various 
possibilities of casual arrivals besides. 

Fez is a noble city, the largest and finest 
Oriental city I had yet seen, fit to compare in 
its own much different way of beauty and of 
splendor with the great cities of the West, 
the great cities of the earth, and of all time ; 
but for me its attractions were overshadowed 
by the gloom of my anxiety. The atmosphere 
of an older world, the spirit of the East, the 
sense of being transported to Bible times, the 
startling interpretations which the Biblical 
stories were receiving by the events of every 
day — these brought me no pleasure. As for 
the constant reminders of the presence of Is- 
lam every hour, at every corner, the perpetual 
breath of prayer and praise, which filled this 
land that was corrupt to the core, they gave 


54 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


me pain more poignant than disgust. The 
call of the mueddin in the early morning was 
a daily agony. I slept three streets from the 
Karueein minarets, but the voice seemed to 
float into my room in the darkness, and coil 
round my head and ring in my ears. Always 
I was awakened at the first sound of the sten- 
torian “ Allah-u Kabar,” or, if I awoke in the 
silence and thought with a feeling of relief, 
“ It is over, I have slept through it,” the 
howling wail would suddenly break in upon 
my thanksgiving. 

There was just one fact of life in Fez that 
gave me a kind of melancholy joy. At nearly 
every turn of a street my ears were arrested by 
the multitudinous cackle, the broken, various- 
voiced sing-song of a children’s school. These 
Moorish schools interested me. They were 
the simplest of all possible institutes, consisting 
usually of a rush-covered cellar, two steps down 
from the street, with the teacher, the Taleb, 
often a half-blind old man, squatting in the 
middle of the floor, and his pupils seated about 
him, and all reciting together some passages 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


55 


of the Koran, the only text-book of education. 
One such school was close under my bedroom 
window ; I heard the drone of it as early as 
seven o’clock every morning, and as often as I 
went abroad I stood for a moment and looked 
in at the open door-way. A black boy sat 
there with a basket for the alms of passers-by. 
He was a bright-eyed little fellow, six or seven 
years of age, and he knew one English phrase 
only : “ Come on,” he would say, and hold up 
the basket and smile. What pathetic interest 
his sunny face had for me, how he would 
cheer and touch me, with what strange memo- 
ries his voice and laugh would startle me, it 
would be pitiful to tell. 

Bear with me ! I was far from my own 
darling, I was in a strange land, I was a weak 
man for all that I was thought so strong, and 
my one besetting infirmity — more consuming 
than a mother’s love — was preyed upon by 
my failing health, which in turn was preying 
upon it. 

And if the sights of the streets brought me 
pain, or pleasure that was akin to pain, what of 


56 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


the sights, the visions, the dreams of my own 
solitary mind ! I could not close my eyes in 
the darkness but I saw my hoy. His little 
child-ghost was always with me. He never 
appeared as I had oftenest seen him — laugh- 
ing, romping, and kicking up his legs on the 
hearthrug. Sometimes he came as he would 
do at home after he committed some childish 
trespass and I had whipped him — opening the 
door of my room and stepping one pace in, 
quietly, nervously, half fearfully, to say good- 
night and kiss me at his bedtime, and I would 
lift my eyes and see, over the shade of my 
library lamp, his little sober red-and-white face 
just dried of its recent tears. Or, again, some- 
times I myself would seem in these dumb 
dramas of the darkness to go into his room 
when lie was asleep, that I might indulge my 
hungry foolish heart with looks of fondness 
that the reproving parent could not give, and 
find him sleeping with an open book in his 
hands, which he had made believe to read. 
And then for sheer folly of love I would pick 
up his wee knickerbockers and turn out its 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


57 




and 


load at either side, to see what a boy’s pockets 
might be like, and discover a curiosity shop of 
poor little treasures — a knife with a broken 
blade, a nail, two marbles, a bit of brass, some 
string, a screw, a crust of bread, a cork, 
the leg of a lobster. 

While I was indulging this weakness the 
conviction was deepening in my mind that my 
boy was ill. So strong did this assurance be- 
come at length, that, though I was ashamed to 
give way to it so far as to set my face towards 
home, being yet no better for my holiday, I sat 
down at length to write a letter to Wenman — 
I had written to my wife by every mail — that 
I might relieve my pent-up feelings. I said 
nothing to him of my misgivings, for I was 
loth to confess to them, having no positive 
reasons whatever, and no negative grounds ex- 
cept the fact that I was receiving no letters. 
But I gave him a full history of my boy’s case, 
described each stage of it in the past, foretold 
its probable developments in the future, 
indicated with elaborate care the treatment 
necessary at every point, and foreshadowed the 


58 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


contingencies under which it might in the end 
become malignant and even deadly, unless 
stopped by the operation that I had myself, 
after years of labor, found the art of making. 

I spent an afternoon in the writing of this 
letter, and when it was done I felt as if a 
burden that had been on my back for ages had 
suddenly been lifted away. Then I went out 
alone to post it. The time was close to 
evening prayers, and as I walked through the 
streets the Talebs and tradesmen, with their 
prayer-mats under their arms, were trooping into 
the various mosques. Going by the Karueein 
Mosque I observed that the good Muslimeen 
were entering it by hundreds. “ Some special 
celebration,” I thought. My heart was light, 
my eyes were alert, and my step was quick. For 
the first time since my coming to the city, Fez 
seemed to me a beautiful place. The witchery 
of the scenes of the streets took hold of me. 
To be thus transported into a world of two 
thousand years ago gave me the delight of 
magic. 

When I reached the English post-office I 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


59 


found it shut up. On its shutters behind its 
iron grating a notice-board was hung out, say- 
^ ing that the office was temporarily closed for 
the sorting of an incoming mail and the de- 
spatch of an outgoing one. There was a little 
crowd of people waiting in front — chiefly 
Moorish servants of English visitors — for the 
window to open again, and near by stood the 
horses of the postal couriers pawing the pave- 
ment. I dropped my letter into the slit in the 
window, and then stood aside to see if the mail 
had brought anything for me at last. 

The window was thrown up, and two letters 
were handed to me through the grating over 
the heads of the Moors, who were crushing un- 
derneath. I took them with a sort of fear, and 
half wished at the first moment that they might 
be from strangers. They were from home : 
one was from my wife — I knew the envelope 
before looking at the handwriting — the other 
was from Wenman. 

I read Wenman’s letter first. Good or bad, 
the news must be broken to me gently. Hardly 
had I torn the sheet open when I saw what it 


60 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


contained. My little Noel had been ill; he 
was still so, hut not seriously, and I was not to 
be alarmed. The silence on their part which I 
had complained of so bitterly had merely been 
due to their fear of giving me unnecessary 
anxiety. For his part (Wenman’s) he would 
have written before, relying on my manliness 
and good sense, but my wife had restrained 
him, saying she knew me better. There was 
no cause for apprehension ; the hoy was going 
along as well as could be expected, etc., etc., etc. 

Not a word to indicate the nature and de- 
gree of the attack. Such an insufficient epistle 
must have disquieted the veriest nincompoop 
alive. To send a thing like that to me — to me 
of all men ! Was there ever so gross a mis- 
take of judgment ? 

I knew in an instant what the fact must be 
— my hoy was down with that old congenital 
infirmity of the throat. Surely my wife had 
told me more. She had. Not by design, but 
unwittingly she had revealed the truth to me. 
Granville W enman had written to me, she said, 
explaining everything, and I was not to worry 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


61 


and bother. All that was possible was being 
done for onr darling, and if I were there I 
could do no more. The illness had to have its 
course, so I must be patient. All this is the 
usual jargon of the surgery — I knew that Wen- 
man had dictated it — and then a true line or 
two worth all the rest from my dear girl’s own 
bleeding mother’s heart. Our poor Noel was 
this, and that, he complained of so-and-so, and 
first began to look unwell in such and such 
ways. 

It was clear as noonday. The attack of the 
throat which I had foreseen had come. Five 
years I had looked for it. Through five long 
years I had waited and watched to check it. I 
had labored day and night that when it should 
come I might meet it. My own health I had 
wasted — and for what ? For fame, for wealth, 
for humanity, for science ? No, no, no, but 
for the life of my boy. And now when his 
enemy was upon him at length, where was I — 
I who alone in all this world of God could save 
him? I was thirteen hundred miles from 
home. 


62 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


Oh, the irony of my fate ! My soul rose in 
rebellion against it. Staggering back through 
the darkening streets, the whole city seemed 
dead and damned. 

How far I walked in this state of oblivion I 
do not know, hut presently out of the vague 
atmosphere wherein all things had been effaced 
I became conscious, like one awakening after a 
drug, of an unusual commotion going on around. 
People were running past me and across me in 
the direction of the Karueein Mosque. From 
that place a loud tumult was rising into the air. 
The noise was increasing with every moment, 
and rising to a Babel of human voices. 

I did not very much heed the commotion. 
What were the paltry excitements of life to me 
now ? I was repeating to myself the last words 
of my poor wife’s letter : “ How I miss you, and 
wish you were with me ! ” “I will go back,” 
I was telling myself, “ I will go back.” 

In the confusion of my mind I heard snatches 
of words spoken by the people as they ran by 
me. “ Nazarene ! ” “ Christian ! ” “ Cursed 

Jew ! ” These were hissed out at each other 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


68 


by the Moors as they were scurrying past. At 
length I heard a Spaniard shout up to a fellow- 
countryman who was on a housetop : u English- 
man caught in the mosque.’’ 

At that my disordered senses recovered them- 
selves, and suddenly I became aware that the 
tumult was coming in my direction. The noise 
grew deeper, louder, and more shrill at every 
step. In another moment it had burst upon 
me in a whirlpool of uproar. 

Round the corner of the narrow lane that 
led to the Karueein Mosque a crowd of people 
came roaring like a torrent. They were Moors, 
Arabs, and Berbers, and they were shouting, 
shrieking, yelling, and uttering every sound 
that the human voice can make. At the first 
instant I realized no more than this, but at the 
next I saw that the people were hunting a man 
as hounds hunt a wolf. The man was flying 
before them ; he was coming towards me : in 
the gathering darkness I could see him ; his 
dress, which was Moorish, was torn into 
shreds about his body ; his head was bare ; his 
chest was bleeding ; I saw his face — it was the 


64 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


face of the American, my companion of the 
voyage. 

He saw me too, and at that instant he turned 
about and faced full upon his pursuers. What 
happened then I dare not tell. 

Father, he was a brave man, and he sold his 
life dearly. But he fell at last. He was but 
one to a hundred. The yelping human dogs 
trod him down like vermin. 

I am a coward. I fled and left him. When 
I got back to my lodgings I called for my 
guide, for I was resolved to leave Fez without 
an hour’s delay. The guide was not to be 
found, and I had to go in search of him. 
When I lit on him, at length, he was in a dingy 
coffee-house, squatting on the ground by the 
side of another Moor, an evil-looking scoundrel, 
who was reciting some brave adventure to a 
group of admiring listeners. 

I called my man out and told him of my pur- 
pose. He lifted his hands in consternation. 
“ Leave Fez to-night ? ” he said. 66 Impossible, 
my sultan, impossible ! My lord has not heard 
the order ! ” 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


65 


u What order ? ” I asked. I was alarmed. 
Must I be a prisoner in Morocco while my child 
lay dying in England ? 

“ That the gates be closed and no Christian 
allowed to leave the city until morning. It is 
the order of the Kaleefa, my sultan, since the 
outrage of the Christian in the mosque this 
morning.” 

I suspected the meaning of this move in an 
instant, and the guide’s answers to my ques- 
tions ratified my fears. One man out of mad- 
ness or thirst for revenge, had led the attack 
upon the American, and a crowd of fanatics 
had killed him — giving him no chance of re- 
treat with his life, either by circumcision or the 
profession of Islam. But cooler heads had 
already found time to think of the penalty of 
shedding Christian blood. That penalty was 
twofold : first, the penalty of disgrace which 
would come of the idea that the lives of Chris- 
tians were not safe in Morocco, and next, the 
penalty of hard dollars to be paid to the Ameri- 
can Minister at Tangier. To escape from the 
double danger the outrage was to he hushed 


66 


TUE LAST CONFESSION. 


up. Circumstances lent themselves to this 
artifice. True, that passage of the American 
across country had been known in every village 
through which he had passed ; but at the gates 
of Fez he had himself cut off all trace of his 
identity. He had entered the city alone, or 
in disguise. His arrival as a stranger had not 
been notified at any of the u clubs ” or bazaars. 
Only one man had recognized him : that man 
was Larby, his guide. 

The body was to be buried secretly, no 
Christian being allowed to see it. Then the 
report was to be given out that the dead man 
had been a Moorish subject, that he had been 
killed in a blood-feud, and that the rumor that 
he was a Christian caught in the act of defying 
the mosque was an error, without the shadow 
of truth in it. But until all this had been done 
no Christian should be allowed to pass through 
the gates. As things stood at present the first 
impulse of a European would be to fly to the 
Consul with the dangerous news. 

I knew something of the Moors and their 
country by this time, and I left Fez that night, 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


67 


but it cost me fifty pounds to get out of it. 
There was a bribe for the kaid, a bribe for the 
Kaleefa, and bribes for every ragged Jack of 
the underlings down to the porter at the gate. 

With all my horror and the fever of my 
anxiety, I could have laughed in the face of 
the first of these functionaries. Between his 
greedy desire of the present I was offering him, 
his suspicion that I knew something of the 
identity of the Christian who had been killed, 
his misgivings as to the reasons of my sudden 
flight, and his dread that I would discover the 
circumstances of the American’s death, the 
figure he cut was a foolish one. But why 
should I reproach the man’s duplicity ? I was 
practicing the like of it myself. Too well I 
knew that if I betrayed any knowledge of what 
had happened it would be impossible that I 
should be allowed to leave Fez. So I pre- 
tended to know nothing. It was a ridiculous 
interview. 

On my way back from it I crossed a little 
company of Moors, leading, surrounding, and 
following a donkey. The donkey was heavily 


68 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


laden with what appeared to be two great 
panniers of rubbish. It was dusk, but my sight 
has always been keen, and I could not help 
seeing that hidden under the rubbish there was 
another burden on the donkey’s back. It was 
the body of a dead man. I had little doubt of 
who the dead man must be ; but I hastened on 
and did not look again. The Moors turned 
into a garden as I passed them. I guessed 
what they were about to do there, but my own 
danger threatened me, and I wished to see and 
know no more. 

As I was passing out of the town in the 
moonlight an hour before midnight, with my 
grumbling tentmen and muleteers at my heels, 
a man stepped out of the shadow of the gate- 
way arch and leered in my face, and said in 
broken English, “ So your Christian friend is 
corrected by Allah ! ” 

Moorish English , my son , or Spanish? 

Spanish. 

It was the scoundrel whom I had seen in the 
coffee-house. I knew he must be Larby, and 
that he had betrayed his master at last. Also, 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


69 


I knew that he was aware that I had seen all. 
At that moment, looking down from my horse’s 
back into the man’s evil face, my whole nature 
changed. I remembered the one opportunity 
which the American had lost out of a wander- 
ing impulse of human tenderness — of saving 
his own life by taking the life of him that 
threatened it, and I said in my heart of hearts, 
“ Now Giod in heaven keep me from the like 
temptation.” 

Ah ! father, do not shrink from me ; think 
of it, only think of it ! I was fifteen hundred 
miles from home, and I was going back to my 
dying boy. 

God keep you , indeed , my son . Your feet 
were set in a slippery place . El Arby , you 
say f A man of your own age ? Dark f 
Sallow f It must be the same . Long ago I 
knew the man you speak of It was under 
another name , and in another country . Yes, 
he was all you say . God forgive him, God 
forgive him ! Poor wrecked and bankrupt 
soul . His evil angel was always at his hand , 


70 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


and his good one far away. He brought his 
father to shame , and his mother to the grave. 
There was a crime and conviction , then banish- 
ment , and after that his father fled from the 
world. But the Church is peace ; he took 
refuge with her , and all is well. Go on now. 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


71 


m. 

Father, I counted it up. Every mile of the 
distance I counted it. And I reckoned every 
hour since my wife’s letter had been written 
against the progress and period of my boy’s 
disease. So many days since the date of the 
letter, and Noel had been ailing and ill so many 
days before that. The gross sum of those days 
was so much, and in that time the affection, if it 
ran the course I looked for, must have reached 
such and such a stage. While I toiled along 
over the broad wastes of that desolate land, I 
seemed to know at any moment what the condi- 
tion must be at the utmost and best of my boy 
in his bed at home. 

Then I reckoned the future as well as the 
past. So many days it would take me to ride 
to Tangier, so many hours to cross from Tan- 
gier to Cadiz, so many days and nights by rail 
from Cadiz to London. The grand total of 


72 


TUE LAST CONFESSION . 


time past since my poor Noel first became un- 
well, and of time to come before I could reach 
his side, would be so much. What would his 
condition be then ? I knew that also. It would 
be so and so. 

Thus, step by step I counted it all up. The 
interval would be long, very long, between the 
beginning of the attack and my getting home, 
but not too long for my hopes. All going well 
with me, I should still arrive in time. If the 
disease had taken an evil turn, my boy might 
perhaps be in its last stages. But then I would 
be there, and I could save him. The operation 
which I had spent five years of my life to master 
would bring him back from the gates of death 
itself. 

Father, I had no doubt of that, and I had no 
doubt of my calculations. Lying here now it 
seems as if the fiends themselves must have 
shrieked to see me in that far-off land gambling 
like a fool in the certainty of the life I loved, 
and reckoning nothing of the hundred poor 
chances that might snuff it out like a candle. 
Call it frenzy, call it madness, nevertheless it 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


73 


kept my heart alive, and saved me from de- 
spair. 

But, oh ! the agony of my impatience ! If 
anything should stop me now ! Let me be one 
day later — only one — and what might not 
occur ! Then, how many were the dangers of 
delay ! First, there was the possibility of ill- 
ness overtaking me. My health was not better, 
but worse, than when I left home. I was 
riding from sunrise to sunset, and not sleeping 
at nights. No matter ! I put all fear from 
that cause away from me. Though my limbs 
refused to bear me up, and under the affliction 
of my nerves my muscles lost the power to 
hold the reins, yet if I could be slung on to 
the back of my horse I should still go on. 

But then there was the worse danger of 
coming into collision with the fanaticism of 
the people through whose country I had to 
pass. I did not fear the fate of the American 
for I could not be gnilty of his folly. But I 
remembered the admission of the English 
Consul at Tangier that a stranger might offend 
the superstitions of the Moslems unwittingly ; 


74 


TIIE LAST CONFESSION. 


I recalled his parting words of counsel, spoken 
half in jest, u Keep out of a Moorish prison ” ; 
and the noisome dungeon into which the 
young Berber had been cast arose before my 
mind in visions of horror. 

What precautions I took to avoid these 
dangers of delay would be a long and foolish 
story. Also, it would be a mean and abject 
one, and I should be ashamed to tell it. How 
I saluted every scurvy beggar on the way with 
the salutation of his faith and country ; how I 
dismounted as I approached a town or a village, 
and only returned to the saddle when I had 
gone through it ; how I uncovered my head — 
in ignorance of Eastern custom — as I went by 
a saint’s house, and how at length (remember- 
ing the Jewish banker who was beaten) I took 
off my shoes and walked barefoot as I passed 
in front of a mosque. 

Yes, it was I who paid all this needless 
homage ; I whose pride has always been my 
bane ; I who could not bend the knee to he 
made a knight ; I who had felt humility before 
no man. Even so it was. In my eagerness, 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


75 


my impatience, my dread of impediment on 
my journey home to my darling who waited 
for me there, I was studying the faces and 
grovelling at the feet of that race of ignorant 
fanatics. 

But the worst of my impediments were with- 
in my own camp. The American was right. 
The Moor cannot comprehend a disinterested 
action. My foolish homage to their faith 
awakened the suspicions of my men. When 
they had tried in vain to fathom the meaning 
of it, they agreed to despise me. I did not 
heed their contempt, but I was compelled to 
take note of its consequences. From being my 
servants, they became my masters. When it 
pleased them to encamp I had to rest, though 
my inclination was to go on, and only when it 
suited them to set out again could I resume my 
journey. In vain did I protest, and plead, and 
threaten. The Moor is often a brave man, but 
these men were a gang of white-livered pol- 
troons, and a blow would have served to subdue 
them. With visions of a Moorish prison before 
my eyes I dared not raise my hand. One 


76 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


weapon alone could I, in my own cowardice, 
employ against them — bribes, bribes, bribes. 
Such was the sole instrument with which I 
combated their laziness, their duplicity, and 
their deceit. 

Father, I was a pitiful sight in my weakness 
and my impatience. W e had not gone far out 
of Fez when I observed that the man Larby was 
at the heels of our company. This alarmed 
me, and I called to my guide. 

“ Alee,” I said, “ who is that evil-looking 
fellow?” 

Alee threw up both hands in amazement. 
“ Evil-looking fellow ! ” he cried. u God be 
gracious to my father ! Who does my lord 
mean ? Not Larby ; no, not Larby. Larby is 
a good man. He lives in one of the mosque 
houses at Tangier. The Nadir leased it to him, 
and he keeps his shop on the Sok de Barra. 
Allah bless Larby. Should you want musk, 
should you want cinnamon, Larby is the man 
to sell to you. But sometimes he guides 
Christians to Fez, and then his brother keeps 
his shop for him.” 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


77 


“ But why is the man following us ? ” I 
asked. 

“ My sultan/’ said Alee, u am I not telling 
you ? Larby is returning home. The Chris- 
tian he took to Fez, where is he ? ” 

“ Yes,” I said, “ where is he ? ” 

Alee grinned, and answered : “ He is gone 
— southwards, my lord.” 

“ Why should you lie to me like that ? ” I 
said. “ You know the Christian is dead, and 
that this Larby was the means of killing 
him ! ” 

“ Shoo ! What is my lord saying ? ” cried 
Alee, lifting his fat hands with a warning ges- 
ture. “ What did my lord tell the Basha ? 
My lord must know nothing — nothing. It 
would not be safe.” 

Then with glances of fear towards Larby, 
and dropping his voice to a whisper, Alee added, 
“ It is true the Christian is dead ; he died last 
sunset. Allah corrected him. So Larby is go- 
ing back alone, going back to his shop, to his 
house, to his wives, to his little daughter 
Hoolia. Allah send Larby a safe return. Not 


78 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


following us, Sidi. No, no ; Larby is going 
back the same way — that is all.” 

The answer did not content me, but I could 
say no more. Nevertheless, my uneasiness at 
the man’s presence increased hour by hour. I 
could not think of him without thinking also of 
the American and of the scene of horror near 
to the Karueein Mosque. I could not look at 
him but the blood down my back ran cold. So 
I called my guide again, and said, “ Send that 
man away ; I will not have him in our com- 
pany.” 

Alee pretended to be deeply wounded. 
“ Sidi,” he said, u ask anything else of me. 
What will you ask ? Will you ask me to die 
for you ? I am ready, I am willing, I am 
satisfied. But Larby is my friend, Larby is 
my brother, and this thing you ask of me I 
cannot do. Allah has not written it. Sidi, it 
cannot be.” 

With such protestations — the common cant 
of the country — I had need to be content. 
But now the impression fixed itself upon my 
mind that the evil-faced scoundrel who had 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


79 


betrayed the American to his death was not 
only following us but me. Oh ! the torment 
of that idea in the impatience of my spirit and 
the racking fever of my nerves ! To be dogged 
day and night as by a bloodhound, never to 
raise my eyes without the dread of encounter- 
ing the man’s watchful eye — the agony of the 
incubus was unbearable ! 

My first thought was merely that the rascal 
meant robbery. However far I might ride 
ahead of my own people in the daytime he 
was always close behind me, and as surely as 
I wandered away from the camp at nightfall I 
was overtaken by him or else I met him face 
to face. 

“ Alee,” I said at last, “ that man is a 
thief.” 

Of course Alee was horrified. “ Ya Allah ! ” 
he cried. “ What is my lord saying ? The 
Moor is no thief. The Moor is true, the Moor 
is honest. None so true and honest as the 
Moor. Wherefore should the Moor be a thief ? 
To be a thief in Barbary is to be a fool. Say 
I rob a Christian. Good. I kill him and take 


m THE LAST CONFESSION. 

all he has and bury him in a lonely place. All 
right. What happens ? Behold, Sidi, this is 
what happens. Your Christian Consul says, 
6 Where is the Christian you took to Fez ? ’ I 
cannot tell. I lie, I deceive, I make excuses. 
No use. Your Christian Consul goes to the 
Kasbah, and says to the Basha : * Cast that 
Moor into prison, he is a robber and a 
murderer ! ’ Then he goes to the Sultan at 
Marrakesh, in the name of your Queen, who 
lives in the country of the Nazarenes, over the 
sea. ‘Pay me twenty thousand dollars/ he 
says, ‘ for the life of my Christian who is robbed 
and murdered.’ Just so. The Sultan — Allah 
preserve our Mulai Hassan ! — he pays the dol- 
lars. Good, all right, just so. But is that all, 
Sidi? No, Sidi, that is not all. The Sultan 
— God prolong the life of our merciful lord ! — 
he then comes to my people, to my Basha, to 
my bashalic, and he says, * pay me back my 
forty thousand dollars — do you hear me, Sidi, 
forty thousand — for the Nazarene who is dead. 
All right. But we cannot pay. Good. The 
Sultan — Allah save him ! — he comes, he takes 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


81 


all we have, lie puts every man of my people 
to the sword. W e are gone, we are wiped out. 
Did I not say, Sidi, to be a thief in Barbary is 
to be a fool ? ” 

It was cold comfort. That the man Larby 
was following me I was confident, and that be 
meant to rob me I was at first convinced. Small 
solace, therefore, in the thought that if the 
worst befell me, and my boy at home died for 
want of bis father, who lay robbed and mur- 
dered in those desolate wastes, my Government 
would exact a claim in paltry dollars. 

My next thought was that the man was merely 
watching me out of the country. That he was 
aware that I knew his secret was only too cer- 
tain ; that he had betrayed my knowledge to 
the authorities at the capital after I had parted 
from them was more than probable, and it was 
not impossible that the very men who had taken 
bribes of me had in their turn bribed him that 
he might follow me and see that I did not in- 
form the Ministers and Consuls of foreign 
countries of the murder of the American in the 
streets of Fez. 


6 


82 


THE LAST CONFESSION . 


That theory partly reconciled me to the man’s 
presence. Let him watch. His constant com- 
pany was in its tormenting way my best security. 
I should go to no Minister, and no Consul should 
see me. I had too much reason to think of my 
own living affairs to busy myself with those of 
the dead American. 

But such poor unction as this reflection 
brought me was dissipated by a second 
thought. What security for the man himself, 
or for the authorities who might have bribed 
him — or perhaps menaced him — to watch me 
would lie in the fact that I had passed out of 
the country without revealing the facts of the 
crime which I had witnessed ? Safely back in 
England, I might tell all with safety. Once 
let me leave Morocco with their secret in my 
breast, and both the penalties these people 
dreaded might be upon them. Merely to 
watch me was wasted labor. They meant to 
do more, or they would have done nothing. 

Thinking so, another idea took possession of 
me with a shock of terror — the man was fol- 
lowing me to kill me as the sole Christian wit- 


THE LAST CONFESSION . 


83 


ness of the crime that had been committed. 
By the light of that theory everything became 
plain. When I visited the Kasbah nothing 
was known of my acquaintance with the mur- 
dered man. My bribes were taken, and I was 
allowed to leave Fez in spite of public orders. 
But then came Larby with alarming intelli- 
gence. I had been a friend of the American, 
and had been seen to speak with him in the 
public streets. Perhaps Larby himself had 
seen me, or perhaps my own guide, Alee, had 
betrayed me to his friend and u brother.” At 
that the Kaid or his Kaleefa had raised their 
eyebrows and sworn at each other for simple- 
tons and fools. To think that the very man 
who had intended to betray them had come 
with an innocent face and a tale of a sick 
child in England! To think that they had 
suffered him to slip through their fingers and 
leave them some paltry bribes of fifty pounds ! 
Fifty pounds taken by stealth against twenty 
thousand dollars to be plumped down after the 
Christian had told his story ! These Naza- 
renes were so subtle, and the sons of Ishmael 


84 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


were so simple. But diamond cut diamond. 
Everything was not lost. One hundred and 
twenty-five miles this Christian had still to 
travel before he could sail from Barbary, and 
not another Christian could he encounter on 
that journey. Then up, Larby, and after 
him ! God make your way easy ! Bemem- 
ber, Larby, remember, good fellow, it is not 
only the pockets of the people of Fez that are 
in danger if that Christian should escape. 
Let him leave the Gharb alive, and your own 
neck is in peril. You were the spy, you were 
the informer, you were the hotheaded madman 
who led the attack that ended in the spilling 
of Christian blood. If the Sultan should have 
to pay twenty thousand dollars to the Minis- 
ter for America at Tangier for the life of this 
dead dog whom we have grubbed into the 
earth in a garden, if the Basha of Fez should 
have to pay forty thousand dollars to the 
Sultan, if the people should have to pay eighty 
thousand dollars to the Basha, then you, Larby, 
you in your turn will have to pay with your 
life to the people. It is your life against the 


THE LAST CONFESSION . 


85 


life of the Christian. So follow him, watch 
him, silence him, he knows your secret — 
away ! 

Such was my notion of what had happened 
at the Kasbah of Fez after I had passed the 
gates of the city. It was a wild vision, but to 
my distempered imagination it seemed to be a 
plausible theory. And now Larby, the spy 
upon the American, Larhy, my assassin-elect, 
Larby, who to save his own life must take 
mine, Larby was with me, was beside me, was 
behind me constantly ! 

God help you , my son , God help you! 
Larhy ! O Larhy ! Again , again ! 

What was I to do ? Open my heart to 
Larby ; tell him it was a blunder ; that I meant 
no man mischief ; that I was merely hastening 
back to my sick boy, who was dying for want 
of me ? That was impossible ; Larby would 
laugh in my face, and still follow me. Bribe 
him ? That was useless ; Larhy would take 
my money and make the surer of his victim. 
It was a difficult problem ; but at length I hit 
on a solution. Father, you will pity me for a 


86 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


fool when you hear it. I would bargain with 
Larby as Faust bargained with the devil. He 
should give me two weeks of life, and come 
with me to England. I should do my work 
here, and Larby should never leave my side. 
My boy’s life should he saved by that opera- 
tion, which I alone knew how to perform. 
After that Larby and I should square accounts 
together. He should have all the money I had 
in the world, and the passport of my name and 
influence for his return to his own country. I 
should write a confession of suicide, and then — 
then — only then — at home — here in my own 
room- — Larby should kill me in order to satisfy 
himself that his own secret and the secret of 
his people must be safe forever. 

It was a mad dream, but what dream of dear 
life is not mad that comes to the man whom 
death dogs like a bloodhound ? And mad as 
it was I tried to make it come true. The man 
was constantly near me, and on the third morn- 
ing of our journey I drew up sharply, and 
said — 

« Larby ! ” 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


87 


“ Sidi,” he answered. 

“ W ould you not like to go on with me to 
England ? ” 

He looked at me with his glittering eyes, 
and I gave an involuntary shiver. I had awak- 
ened the man’s suspicions in an instant. He 
thought I meant to entrap him. But he only 
smiled knowingly, shrugged his shoulders, and 
answered civilly : “ I have my shop in the Sdk 
de Barra, Sidi. And then there are my wives 
and my sons and my little Hoolia — God be 
praised for all his blessings.” 

“ Hoolia ? ” I asked. 

“ My little daughter, Sidi.” 

“ How old is she ? ” 

“ Six, Sidi, only six, but as fair as an 
angel.” 

“ I dare say she misses you when you are 
away, Larby,” I said. 

“ You have truth, Sidi. She sits in the Sok 
by the tents of the brassworkers and plaits 
rushes all the day long, and looks over to where 
the camels come by the saints’ houses on the 
hill, and waits and watches.” 


88 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


u Larby,” I said, “ I, too, have a child at 
home who is waiting and watching. A boy, 
my little Noel, six years of age, just as old as 
your own little Hoolia. And so bright, so 
winsome. But he is ill, he is dying, and 
he is all the world to me. Larby, I am a sur- 
geon, I am a doctor, if I could but reach Eng- 
land ” 

It was worse than useless. I stopped, for I 
could go no farther. The cold glitter of the 
man’s eyes passed over me like frost over flame, 
and I knew his thought as well as if he had 
spoken it. “ I have heard that story before,” 
he was telling him, “ I have heard it at the 
Kasbah, and it is a lie and a trick.” 

My plan was folly, and I abandoned it ; but 
I was more than ever convinced of my theory. 
This man was following me to kill me. He 
was waiting an opportunity to do his work 
safely, secretly, and effectually. His rulers 
would shield him in his crime, for by that crime 
they would themselves be shielded. 

Father, my theory, like my plan, was foolish- 
ness. Only a madman would have dreamt of 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


89 


concealing a crime whereof there was but one 
witness, by a second crime, whereof the wit- 
nesses must have been five hundred. The 
American had travelled in disguise and cut off 
the trace of his identity to all men save myself. 
When he died at the hands of the fanatics, 
whose faith he had outraged, I alone of all 
Christians knew that it was Christian blood 
that had stained the streets of Fez. But how 
different my own death must have been. I 
had travelled openly as a Christian and an 
Englishman. At the consulate of Tangier I 
was known by name and repute, and at that of 
Fez I had registered myself. My presence had 
been notified at every town I had passed 
through, and the men of my caravan would not 
have dared to return to their homes without 
me. In the case of the murder of the American 
the chances to the Moorish authorities of claim 
for indemnity were as one to five hundred. In 
the case of the like catastrophe to myself they 
must have been as five hundred to one. Thus, 
in spite of fanaticism and the ineradicable 
hatred of the Moslem for the Nazarene, Morocco 


90 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


to me, as to all Christian travellers, travelling 
openly and behaving themselves properly, was 
as safe a place as England itself. 

But how can a man be hot and cold and 
wise and foolish in a moment ? I was in no 
humor to put the matter to myself temperate- 
ly, and, though I had been so cool as to 
persuade myself that the authorities whom I 
had bribed could not have been madmen 
enough to think that they could conceal the 
murder of the American by murdering me, yet 
I must have remained convinced that Larby 
himself was such a madman. 

As a surgeon, I had some knowledge of mad- 
ness, and the cold, clear, steely glitter of the 
man’s eyes when he looked at me was a thing 
that I could not mistake. I had seen it before 
in religious monomaniacs. It was an infallible 
and fatal sign. With that light in the eyes, 
like the glance of a dagger, men will kill the 
wives they love, and women will slaughter the 
children of their bosom. When I saw it in 
Larby I shivered with a chilly presentiment. 
It seemed to say that I should see my home no 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


91 


more. I have seen my home once more ; I am 
hack in England, I am here, but— — 

No, no, not that ! Larhy ! Don't tell 
me you did that. 

Father, is my crime so dark ? That hour 
comes back and back. How long will it haunt 
me? How long ? For ever and ever. When 
time for me is swallowed up in eternity, eternity 
will be swallowed up in the memory of that 
hour. Peace ! Do you say peace ? Ah ! yes, 
yes ; God is merciful ! 

Before I had spoken to Larhy his presence 
in our company had been only as a dark and 
fateful shadow. Now it was a foul and hateful 
incubus. Never in all my life until then had I 
felt hatred for any human creature. But I 
hated that man with all the sinews of my soul. 
What was it to me that he was a madman ? 
He intended to keep me from my dying boy. 
Why should I feel tenderness towards him be- 
cause he was the father of his little Hoolia ? 
By killing me he would kill my little Noel. 

I began to recall the doctrines of the Ameri- 
can as he propounded them on the ship. It 


92 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


was the life of an honest man against the life 
of a scoundrel. These things should be rated 
ad valorem . If the worst came to the worst, 
why should I have more respect for this mad- 
man’s life than for my own ? 

I looked at the man and measured his strength 
against mine. He was a brawny fellow with 
broad shoulders, and I was no better than a 
weakling. I was afraid of him, but I was yet 
more afraid of myself. Sometimes I surprised 
my half-conscious mind in the act of taking 
out of its silver-mounted sheath the large 
curved knife which I had bought of the haw- 
ker at Tangier, and now wore in the belt of 
my Norfolk jacket. In my cowardice and my 
weakness this terrified me. Not all my bor- 
rowed philosophy served to support me against 
the fear of my own impulses. Meantime, I was 
in an agony of suspense and dread. The nights 
brought me no rest and the mornings no fresh- 
ness. 

On the fourth day out of Fez we arrived at 
Wazzan, and there, though the hour was still 
early, my men decided to encamp for the night. 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


93 


I protested, and they retorted ; I threatened, 
and they excused themselves. The mules 
wanted shoeing. I offered to pay double that 
they might be shod immediately. The tents 
were torn by a heavy wind the previous night. 
I offered to buy new ones. When their trum- 
pery excuses failed them, the men rebelled 
openly, and declared their determination not to 
stir out of Wazzan that night. 

But they had reckoned without their host 
this time. I found that there was an English 
Consul at W azzan, and I went in search of him. 
His name was Smith, and he was a typical Eng- 
lishman — ample, expansive, firm, resolute, domi- 
neering, and not troubled with too much 
sentiment. I told him of the revolt of my 
people and of the tyranny of the subterfuges 
whereby they had repeatedly extorted bribes. 
The good fellow came to my relief. He was 
a man of purpose, and he had no dying child 
twelve hundred miles away to make him a fool 
and a coward. 

“ Men,” he said, “ you’ve got to start away 
with this gentleman at sundown, and ride night 


94 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


and day — do you hear me, night and day — until 
you come to Tangier. A servant of my own 
shall go with you, and if you stop or delay or 
halt or go slowly he shall see that every man of 
you is clapped into the Kasbah as a black- 
mailer and a thief .” 

There was no more talk of rebellion. The 
men protested that they had always been will- 
ing to travel. Sidi had been good to them, 
and they would be good to Sidi. At sundown 
they would be ready. 

“ You will have no more trouble, sir,” said the 
Consul; “but I will come back to see you start.” 

I thanked him and we parted. It was still 
an hour before sunset, and I turned aside to 
look at the town. I had barely walked a dozen 
paces when I came face to face with Larby. 
In the turmoil of my conflict with the men I 
had actually forgotten him for one long hour. 
He looked at me with his glittering eyes, and 
then his cold, clear gaze followed the Consul as 
he passed down the street. That double glance 
was like a shadowy warning. It gave me a 
shock of terror. 


TUE LAST CONFESSION. 


95 


How had I forgotten my resolve to baffle 
suspicion by exchanging no word or look with 
any European Minister or Consul as long as I 
remained in Morocco ? The expression in the 
man’s face was not to he mistaken. It seemed 
to say, “ So you have told all ; very well, Sidi, 
we shall see.” 

With a sense as of creeping and cringing I 
passed on. The shadow of death seemed to 
have fallen upon me at last. I felt myself to 
be a doomed man. That madman would 
surely kill me. He would watch his chance ; 
I should never escape him ; my home would 
see me no more ; my boy would die for want 
of me. 

A tingling noise, as of the jangling of bells, 
was in my ears. Perhaps it was the tinkling of 
the bells of the water-carriers, prolonged and 
unbroken. A gauzy mist danced before my 
eyes. Perhaps it was the palpitating haze 
which the sun cast back from the gilded domes 
and minarets. 

Domes and minarets were everywhere in this 
town of Wazzan. It seemed to be a place of 


96 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


mosques and saints’ houses. Where the wide 
arch and the trough of the mosque were not, 
there was the open door in the low white- 
washed wall of the saint’s house, surmounted 
by its white flag. In my dazed condition, I 
was sometimes in danger of stumbling into 
such places unawares. At the instant of re- 
covered consciousness I always remembered the 
warnings of my guide as I stood by the house 
of Sidi Gali at Tangier : u Sacred place ? Yes, 
sacred. No Nazarene may enter it. But 
Moslems, yes Moslems may fly here for sanc- 
tuary. Life to the Moslem, death to the 
Nazarene. So it is.” 

Oh, it is an awful thing to feel that death is 
waiting for you constantly, that at any moment, 
at any turn, at any corner it may be upon you ! 
Such was my state as I walked on that evening, 
waiting for the sunset, through the streets of 
Wazzan. At one moment I was conscious of 
a sound in my ears above the din of traffic — 
the Arrali of the ass-drivers, the Balctk of the 
men riding mules, and the general clamor of 
tongues. It was the steady beat of a footstep 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


97 


close behind me. I knew whose footstep it 
was. I turned about quickly, and Larby was 
again face to face with me. He met my gaze 
with the same cold, glittering look. My 
impulse was- to fly at his throat, but that I dare 
not do. I knew myself to be a coward, and I 
remembered the Moorish prison. 

“ Larby,” I said, “ what do you want ? ” 

“ Nothing, Sidi, nothing,” he answered. 

Ci Then why are you following me like 
this?” 

“ Following you, Sidi ? ” The fellow raised 
his eyebrows and lifted both hands in astonish- 
ment. 

“ Yes, following me, dogging me, watching 
me, tracking me down. What does it mean ? 
Speak out plainly.” 

“ Sidi is jesting,” he said, with a mischievous 
smile. “ Is not this Wazzan, the holy city of 
Wazzan? Sidi is looking at the streets, at the 
mosques, at the saints’ houses. So is Larby. 
That is all.” 

One glance at the man’s evil eyes would have 
told you that he lied. 


98 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


“ Which way are you going ? ” I asked. 
u This way.” With a motion of the head 
he indicated the street before him. 

“ Then I am going to this/’ I said, and I 
walked away in the opposite direction. 

I resolved to return to the English Consul, 
to tell him everything, and claim his protection. 
Though all the Moorish authorities in Morocco 
were in league with this religious monomaniac, 
yet surely there was life and safety under 
English power for one whose only offence was 
that of being witness to a crime which might 
lead to a claim for indemnity. 

That it should come to this , and I of all 
men should hear it ! God help me ! God 
lead me ! God give me light . Light , light , 
0 God ; give me light ! 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


99 


IY. 

Full of this new purpose and of the vague 
hope inspired by it, I was making my way back 
to the house of the Consul, when I came upon 
two postal couriers newly arrived from Tangier 
on their way to Fez. They were drawn up, 
amid a throng of the townspeople, before the 
palace of the Grand Shereef, and with the 
Moorish passion for 66 powder-play ” they were 
firing their matchlocks into the air as salute 
and signal. Sight of the mail-bags slung at 
their sides, and of the Shereef’ s satchel, which 
they had come some miles out of their course 
to deliver, suggested the thought that they 
might be carrying letters for me, which could 
never come to my hands unless they were given 
to me now. The couriers spoke some little 
English. I explained my case to them, and 
begged them to open their bags and see if any- 
thing had been sent forward in my name from 


100 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


Tangier to Fez. True to the phlegmatic char- 
acter of the Moor in all affairs of common life, 
they protested that they dare not do so ; the 
hags were tied and sealed, and none dare open 
them. If there were letters of mine inside 
they must go on to Fez, and then return to 
Tangier. But with the usual results I had 
recourse to my old expedient ; a bribe broke 
the seals, the bags were searched, and two 
letters were found for me. 

The letters, like those that came to Fez, were 
one from my wife and one from Wenman. I 
could not wait till I was alone, but broke open 
the envelopes and read my letters where I stood. 
A little crowd of Moors had gathered about me 
— men, youths, boys, and children — the ragged 
inhabitants of the streets of the holy city. 
They seemed to be chaffing and laughing at 
my. expense, but I paid no heed to them. 

Just as before, so now, and for the same 
reason I read W enman’s letter first. I remem- 
ber every word of it, for every word seemed to 
burn into my brain like flame. 

“ My dear fellow,” wrote Wenman, “ I think 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


101 


it my duty to tell you that your little son is 
seriously ill.” 

I knew it — I knew it ; who knew it so well 
as I, though I was more than a thousand miles 
away ? 

“It is a strange fact that he is down with 
the very disease of the throat which you have for 
so long a time made your especial study. Such, 
at least, is our diagnosis, assisted by your own 
discoveries. The case has now reached that 
stage where we must contemplate the possibility 
of the operation which you have performed 
with such amazing results. Our only uneasi- 
ness arises from the circumstance that this 
operation has hitherto been done by no one 
except yourself. We have, however, your ex- 
planations and your diagrams, and on these we 
must rely. And, even if you were here, his is 
not a case in which your own hand should be 
engaged. Therefore, rest assured, my dear 
fellow,” etc., etc. 

Blockheads ! If they had not done it already 
they must not do it at all. I would telegraph 
from Tangier that I was coming. Not a case 


102 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


for my hand ! Fools, fools ! It was a case for 
my hand only. 

I did not stop to read the friendly part of 
Wenman’s letter, the good soul’s expression of 
sympathy and solicitude, but in the fever of my 
impatience, sweating at every pore and break- 
ing into loud exclamations, I tore open the 
letter from my wife. My eyes swam over the 
sheet, and I missed much at that first reading, 
but the essential part of the message stood out 
before me as if written in red. 

“We . . . so delighted . . . your letters. 
. . . Glad you are having warm beautiful 
weather . . . Trust . . . make you strong and 
well. ... We are having blizzards here . . . 
snowing to-day ... I am sorry to tell you, 
dearest, that our darling is very ill. It is his 
throat again. This is Friday, and he has 
grown worse every day since I wrote on Monday. 
When he can speak he is always calling for 
you. He thinks if you were here he would 
soon be well. He is very weak, for he can 
take no nourishment, and he has grown so thin, 
poor little fellow. But he looks very lovely, 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


103 


and every night he says in his prayers, * God 
bless papa, and bring him safely home.’ ...” 

I could bear no more, the page in my hands 
was blotted out, and for the first time since I 
became a man I broke into a flood of tears. 

0 Omnipotent Lord of Heaven and earth, to 
think that this child is as life of my life and 
soul of my soul, that he is dying, that I alone 
of all men living can save him, and that we are 
twelve hundred miles apart ! Wipe them out, 
0 Lord — wipe out this accursed space dividing 
us ; annihilate it. Thou canst do all, thou 
canst remove mountains, and this is but a little 
thing to Thee. Give me my darling under my 
hands, and I will snatch him out of the arms 
of death itself. 

Did I utter such words aloud out of the great 
tempest of my trouble ? I cannot say ; I do 
not know. Only when I had lifted my eyes 
from my wife’s letter did I become conscious 
of where I was and what was going on around 
me. I was still in the midst of the crowd of 
idlers, and they were grinning, and laughing, 
and jeering, and mocking at the sight of tears 


104 


TEE LAST CONFESSION. 


— weak, womanish, stupid tears — on the face 
of a strong man. 

I was ashamed, but I was yet more angry, 
and to escape from the danger of an outbreak 
of my wrath I turned quickly aside, and walked* 
rapidly down a narrow alley. As I did so a 
second paper dropped to the ground from the 
sheet of my wife’s letter. Before I had picked 
it up I saw what it was. It was a message 
from my hoy himself, in the handwriting of his 
nurse. 

u He is brighter to-night,” the good creature 
herself wrote at the top of the page, “ and he 
would insist on dictating this letter.” 

“ My dear, dear papa ” 

When I had read thus far I was conscious 
again that the yelling, harking, bleating mob 
behind were looking after me. To avoid the 
torment of their gaze I hurried on, passed down 
a second alley, and then turned into a narrow 
opening which seemed to be the mouth of a 
third. But I paid small heed to my footsteps, 
for all my mind was with the paper which I 
wished to read. Finding myself in a quiet 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


105 


place at length, I read it. The words were 
my little darling’s own, and I could hear his 
voice as if he were speaking them — 

“My dear, dear papa, I am ill with my 
throat, and sometimes I can’t speak. Last 
night the ceiling was falling down on me, and 
the fire was coming up to the bed. But I’m 
werry nearly all right now. W e are going to 
have a Thanksgiving party soon — me, and 
Jumbo, and Scotty, the puppy. When are you 
coming home? Do you live in a tent in 
Morocco ? I have a fire in my bedroom : do 
you ? W rite and send me some foreign stamps 
from Tangier. Are the little boys black in 
Morocco? Nurse showed me a picture of a 
lady who lives there, and she’s all black except 
her lips, and her mouth stands out. Have 
you got a black servant? Have you got a 
horse to ride on ? Is he black ? I am tired 
now. Good night. Mama says I must not 
tell you to come home quick. Jumbo’s all 
right. He grunts when you shove him along. 
So good night, papa. * # # # These kisses 


106 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


are all for you. I am so thin. — From your 
little boy, 

“ Noel.” 

Come home ! Yes, my darling, I will come 
home. Nothing shall stop me now — nothing, 
nothing ! The sun is almost set. Everything 
is ready. The men must he saddling the 
horses again. In less than half an hour I 
shall have started afresh. I will ride all night 
to-night and all day to-morrow, and in a week 
I shall be standing by your side. A week ! 
How long ! how long ! Lord of life and death, 
keep my hoy alive until then ! 

I became conscious that I was speaking hot 
words such as these aloud. Even agony like 
mine has its lucidities of that kind. At the 
same moment I heard footsteps somewhere be- 
hind me. They were slow and steady foot- 
steps, but I knew them too well. The blood 
rushed to my head and back to my heart. I 
looked up and around. Where was I ? 
Where ? Where ? 

I was in a little court, surrounded by low, 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


107 


wliite-washed walls. Before me there was an 
inner compartment roofed by a rude dome. 
From the apex of this dome there floated a 
tiny white flag. I was in a saint’s house. In 
the confusion of my mind, and the agonizing 
disarray of all my senses, I had stumbled into 
the sacred place unawares. 

The footsteps came nearer. They seemed 
to he sounding on the hack of my neck. I 
struggled forward a few paces. By a last 
mechanical resource of despair I tried to con- 
ceal myself in the inner chamber. I was too 
late. A face appeared in the opening at 
which I had entered. It was Larby’s face, 
contracted into a grimacing expression. 

I read the thought of the man’s face as by 
a flash of light. “ Good, Sidi, good ! You 
have done my work as well as my masters. 
You are a dead man ; no one will know, and I 
need never to lift my hand to you.” 

At the next instant the face was gone. In 
the moment following I lived a lifetime. My 
brain did not think ; it lightened. I remem- 
bered the death of the American in the streets 


108 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


of Fez. I recalled the jeering crowd at the 
top of the alley. I reflected that Larby was 
gone to tell the mob that I had dishonored 
one of their sanctuaries. I saw myself drag- 
ged out, trampled under foot, torn to pieces, 
and then smuggled away in the dusk on a 
donkey’s back under panniers of filth. My 
horses ready, my men waiting, my boy dying 
for want of me, and myself dead in a dunghill. 

“ Great Jehovah, lend me Thy strength ! ” I 
cried, as I rushed out into the alley. Larby 
was stealing away with rapid steps. I over- 
took him ; I laid hold of him by the hood of 
his jellab. He turned upon me. All my soul 
was roused to uncontrollable fury. I took the 
man in both my arms, I threw him off his feet, 
I lifted him by one mighty effort high above 
my shoulders and flung him to the ground. 

He began to cry out, and I sprang upon 
him again and laid hold of his throat. I 
knew where to grip, and not a sound could he 
utter. We were still in the alley, and I put 
my left hand into the neck of his kaftan and 
dragged him back into the saint’s house. He 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


103 


drew liis dagger and lunged at me. I parried 
the thrust with my foot and broke his arm 
with my heel. Then there was a moment of 
horrible bedazzlement. Red flames flashed 
before me. My head grew dizzy. The whole 
universe seemed to reel beneath my feet. The 
man was doubled backwards across my knee. 
I had drawn my knife — I knew where to strike 
— and “ For my boy, my boy ! ” I cried in my 
heart. 

It was done. The man died without a groan. 
His body collapsed in my hands, rolled from my 
knee, and fell at my feet — doubled up, the head 
under the neck, the broken arm under the trunk, 
in u heap, a heap. 

Oh ! oh ! Larhy ! Larhy ! 

Then came an awful revulsion of feeling. 
For a moment I stood looking down, over- 
whelmed with the horror of my act. In a sort 
of drunken stupor I gazed at the wide-open 
eyes, and the grimacing face fixed in its hideous- 
ness by the convulsion of death. O God ! 0 
God ! what had I done ! what had I done ! 

But I did not cry out. In that awful moment 


110 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


an instinct of self-preservation saved me. The 
fatal weapon dropped from my hand, and I 
crept out of the place. My great strength was 
all gone now. I staggered along, and at every 
step my limbs grew more numb and stiff. 

But in the alley I looked around. I knew 
no way hack to my people except that way by 
which I came. Down the other alley and 
through the crowd of idlers I must go. W ould 
they be there still ? If so, would they see in 
my face what I had done ? 

I was no criminal to mask my crime. In a 
dull, stupid, drowsy, comatose state I tottered 
down the alley and through the crowd. They 
saw me ; they recognized me ; I knew that they 
were jeering at me, but I knew no more. 
u Skairi ” shouted one, and “ Skairi ” shouted 
another, and as I staggered away they all 
shouted u Skairi ” together. 

Father, they called me a drunkard. I was 
a drunkard indeed, but I was drunk with 
blood. 

The sun had set by this time. Its last rays 
were rising off the gilded top of the highest 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


Ill 


minaret in a golden mist that looked like flame 
leaping out of a kiln. I saw that, as I saw 
everything, through a palpitating haze. 

When at length I reached the place where I 
had left my people I found the horses saddled, 
the mules with their burdens packed on their 
panniers, the men waiting, and everything ready. 
Full well I knew that I ought to leap to my 
seat instantly and be gone without delay ; but 
I seemed to have lost all power of prompt 
action. I was thinking of what I wanted to do, 
but I could not do it. The men spoke to me, 
and I know that I looked vacantly into their 
faces and did not answer. One said to another, 
“ Sidi is growing deaf.” The other touched 
his forehead and grinned. 

I was fumbling with the stirrup of my saddle 
when the English Consul came up and hailed 
me with cheerful spirits. By an effort that was 
like a spasm I replied. 

u Allow me, doctor,” he said, and he offered 
his knee that I might mount. 

“ Ah, no, no,” I stammered, and I scrambled 
to my seat. 


112 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


While I was fumbling with my double rein I 
saw that he was looking at my hand. 

“ You’ve cut your fingers, doctor,” he said. 

There was blood on them. The blood was 
not mine, but a sort of mechanical cunning 
came to my relief. I took out my handkerchief 
and made a pretence to bind it about my hand. 

Alee, the guide, was at my right side settling 
my lumbering foot in my stirrup. I felt him 
touch the sheath of my knife, and then I remem- 
bered that it must be empty. 

“ Sidi has lost his dagger,” he said. u Look ! ” 

The Consul, who had been on my left, 
wheeled round by the horse’s head, glanced at 
the useless sheath that was stuck in the belt of 
my jacket, and then looked back into my stupid 
face. 

u Sidi is ill,” he said quietly ; “ ride quickly, 
my men, lose no time, get him out of the coun- 
try without delay ! ” 

I heard Alee answer, “ Right — all right ! ” 

Then the Consul’s servant rode up — he was 
a Berber — and took his place at the head of our 
caravan. 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


113 


u All ready ? ” asked the Consul, in Arabic. 
iC Ready/’ the men answered. 

“ Then away, as if you were flying for your 
lives ! ” 

The men put spurs to their mules, Alee gave 
the lash to my horse, and we started. 

u Good-bye, doctor,” cried the Consul ; cc may 
you find your little son better when you reach 
home ! ” 

I shouted some incoherent answers in a 
thick, loud voice, and in a few minutes more we 
were gallopingacross the plain outside the town. 

The next two hours are a blank in my 
memory. In a kind of drunken stupor I rode 
on and on. The gray light deepened into the 
darkness of night, and the stars came out. Still 
we rode and rode. The moon appeared in the 
southern sky and rose into the broad whiteness 
of the stars overhead. Then consciousness 
came back to me, and with it came the first 
pangs of remorse. Through the long hours of 
that night-ride one awful sight stood up con- 
stantly before my eyes. It was the sight of 
that dead body, stark and cold, lying within that 


114 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


little sanctuary behind me, white now with the 
moonlight, and silent with the night. 

0 Larby , Larby ! You shamed me. You 
drove me from the icorld. You brought down 
your mother to the grave. And yet , and yet 
— must I absolve your murderer f 

Father, I reached my home at last. At 
Gilbraltar I telegraphed that I was coming, 
and at Dover I received a telegram in reply. 
Four days had intervened between the despatch 
of my message and the receipt of my wife’s. 
Anything might have happened in that time, 
and my anxiety was feverish. Stepping on to 
the Admiralty Pier, I saw a telegraph boy 
bustling about among the passengers from the 
packet with a telegram in his hand. 

“ What name ? ” I asked. 

He gave one that was not my own and yet 
sounded like it. 

1 looked at the envelope. Clearly the name 
was intended for mine. I snatched the tele- 
gram out of the boy’s hand. It ran — 

“ W elcome home ; boy very weak, but not 
beyond hope.” 


TUE LAST CONFESSION. 


115 


I think I read the words aloud, amid all the 
people, so tremendous was my relief, and so 
overwhelming my joy. The messenger got a 
gold coin for himself, and I leapt into the train. 

At Charing Cross I did not wait for my 
luggage, but gave a foolish tip to a porter and 
told him to send my things after me. Within 
half a minute of my arrival I was driving out 
of the station. 

What I suffered during those last moments 
of waiting before I reached my house no tongue 
of man could tell. I read my wife’s telegram 
again, and observed for the first time that it 
was now six hours old. Six hours ! They were 
like six days to my tortured mind. From the 
moment when we turned out of Oxford Street 
until we drew up at my own door in Wimpole 
Street I did not once draw breath. And being 
here I dared hardly lift my eyes to the window 
lest the blinds should be down. 

I had my latchkey with me, and I let my- 
self in without ringing. A moment afterwards 
I was in my darling’s room. My beloved wife 
was with our boy, and he was unconscious. 


116 


THE LAST CONFESSION . 


That did not trouble me at all, for I saw at a 
glance that I was not too late. Throwing off 
my coat, I sent to the surgery for my case, 
dismissed my dear girl with scant embraces, 
drew my darling’s cot up to the window, and 
tore down the curtains that kept out the light, 
for the spring day was far spent. 

Then, being alone with my darling, I did my 
work. I had trembled like an aspen leaf until 
I entered his room, but when the time came 
my hand was as firm as a rock and my pulse 
beat like a child’s. 

I knew I could do it, and I did it. God had 
spared me to come home, and I had kept my 
vow. I had travelled ten days and nights to 
tackle the work, but it was a short task when 
once begun. 

After I had finished I opened the door to call 
my wife hack to the room. The poor soul was 
crouching with the boy’s nurse on the threshold, 
and they were doing their utmost to choke their 
sobs. 

“ There ! ” I cried, “ there’s your boy ! 
He’ll be all right now.” 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


117 


The mischief was removed, and I had never 
a doubt of the child’s recovery. 

My wife flung herself on my breast, and then 
I realized the price I had paid for so much ner- 
vous tension. All the nerves of organic life 
seemed to collapse in an instant. 

“ I’m dizzy ; lead me to my room,” I said. 

My wife brought me brandy, but my hand 
could not lift the tumbler to my mouth, and 
when my dear girl’s arms had raised my own, 
the glass rattled against my teeth. They put 
me to bed ; I was done — done. 

God will forgive him. Why should not 

I? 

Father, that was a month ago, and I am 
lying here still. It is not neurasthenia of the 
body that is killing me, hut neurasthenia of the 
soul. No doctor’s drug will ever purge me of 
that. It is here like fire in my brain, and here 
like ice in my heart. Was my awful act 
justifiable before God ? Was it right in the 
eyes of Him who has written in the tables of 
His law, Thou shalt do no murder ? Was it 
murder? Was it crime? If I outraged the 


118 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


letter of the holy edict, did I also wrong its 
spirit ? 

Speak, speak, for pity’s sake, speak. Have 
mercy upon me, as you hope for mercy. Think 
where I was and what fate was before me. 
Would I do it again in spite of all ? Yes, yes, 
a thousand, thousand times, yes. I will go to 
God with that word on my lips, and He shall 
judge me. 

And yet I suffer these agonies of doubt. 
Life was always a sacred thing to me. God 
gave it, and only God should take it away. 
He who spilt the blood of his fellow-man took 
the government of the world out of God’s 
hands. And then — and then — father, have I 
not told you all ? 

Yes, yes , the Father of all fathers will 
pardon him . 

On the day when I arrived at Tangier from 
Fez I had some two hours to wait for the 
French steamer from Malaga that was to take 
me to Cadiz. In order to beguile my mind of 
its impatience, I walked through the town as 
far as the outer Sok — the Sok de Barra. It 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


119 


was market clay, Thursday, and the place was 
the same animated and varied scene as I had 
looked upon before. Crushing my way through 
the throng, I came upon the saint’s house near 
the middle of the market. The sight of the 
little white structure with its white flag brought 
back the tragedy I saw enacted there, and the 
thought of that horror was now made hellish 
to my conscience by the memory of another 
tragedy at another saint’s house. 

I turned quickly aside, and stepping up to 
the elevated causeway that runs in front of the 
tents of the brass-workers, I stood awhile and 
watched the Jewish workmen hammering the 
designs on their trays. Presently I became 
aware of a little girl who was sitting on a 
bundle of rushes and plaiting them into a chain. 
She was a tiny thing, six years of age at the 
utmost, but with the sober look of a matron. 
Her sweet face was the color of copper, and 
her quiet eyes were deep blue. A yellow gown 
of some light fabric covered her body, hut her 
feet were bare. She worked at her plaiting 
with steady industry, and as often as she 


120 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


stopped to draw a rush from the bundle be- 
neath her she lifted her eyes and looked with 
a wistful gaze over the feeding-ground of the 
camels, and down the lane to the bridge, and 
up by the big house on the hillside to where 
the sandy road goes off to Fez. 

The little demure figure, amid so many romp- 
ing children, interested and touched me. This 
was noticed by a Jewish brassworker before 
whose open booth I stood, and he smiled and 
nodded his head in the direction of the little 
woman. 

“ Dear little Sobersides/' I said / “ does she 
never play with other children ? ” 

u No," said the Jew, u she sits here every day, 
and all day long — that is, when her father is 
away.” 

“ Whose child is she ? ” I asked. An awful 
thought had struck me. 

“A great rascal's,” the Jew answered, 
“ though the little one is such an angel. He 
keeps a spice shop over yonder, but he is a 
guide as well as a merchant, and when he is out 
on a journey the child sits here and waits and 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


121 


watches for his coming home again. She can 
catch the first sight of travellers from this place, 
and she knows her father at any distance. 
See ! — do you. know where she’s looking now ? 
Over the road by El Minzah — that’s the way 
from Fez. Her father has gone there with a 
Christian. 

The sweat was bursting from my forehead. 

“ What’s his name ? ” I asked. 

“ The Moors call him Larby,” said the Jew, 
“and the Christians nickname him Ananias. 
They say he is a Spanish renegade, escaped 
from Ceuta, who witnessed to the Prophet and 
married a Moorish wife. But he’s everything 
to the little one — bless her innocent face ! 
Look ! do you see the tiny brown dish at her 
side? That’s for her drinking water. She 
brings it full every day, and also a little cake 
of bread for her dinner. 

“ She’s never tired of waiting, and if Larby 
does not come home to-night she’ll be here in 
the morning. I do believe that if anything 
happened to Larby she would wait until dooms- 
day” 


122 


TEE LAST CONFESSION. 


My throat was choking me, and I could not 
speak. The Jew saw my emotion, but he 
showed no surprise. I stepped up to the little 
one and stroked her glossy black hair. 

u Hoolia ?.” I said. 

She smiled back into my face and answered, 
u Iyyeh” — yes. 

I could say no more ; I dare not look into 
her trustful eyes and think that he whom she 
waited for would never come again. I stooped 
and kissed the child, and then fled away. 

God show me my duty . The Priest or the 
Man — which ? 

Listen ! do you hear him ? That’s the foot- 
step of my boy overhead. My darling ! He 
is well again now. My little sunny laddie ! 
He came into my bedroom this morning with a 
hop, skip, and a jump — a gleam of sunshine. 
Poor innocent, thoughtless boy. They will take 
him into the country soon, and he will romp in 
the lanes and tear up the flowers in the garden. 
My son, my son ! He has drained my life 
away ; he has taken all my strength. Do I 
wish that I had it back ! Yes, but only — yes, 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


123 


only that I might give it him again. Hark ! 
That’s his voice, that’s his laughter. How 
happy he is ! When I think how soon — how 
very soon — when I think that I 

God sees all. He is looking down on little 
Hoolia waiting, waiting, waiting where the 
camels come over the hills, and on my little 
Noel laughingand prancing in the room above 
us. 

Father, I have told you all at last. There 
are tears in your eyes, father. You are crying. 
Tell me, then, what hope is left? You know 
my sin, and you know my suffering. Did I do 
wrong ? Did I do right ? 

My son , God's law was made for man, not 
man for His law. If the spirit has been 
broken where the letter has been kept , the spirit 
may be kept where the letter has been 
broken. Your earthly father dare not judge 
you. To your Heavenly Father he must leave 
both the deed and the circumstance. It is for 
Him to justify or forgive. If you are inno- 
cent, He will place your hand in the hand of 
him who slew the Egyptian and yet looked on 


124 


THE LAST CONFESSION. 


the burning bush. And if you are guilty , 
He will not shut His ears to the cry of your 
despair . 

He has gone. I could not tell him. It would 
have embittered his parting hour ; it would 
have poisoned the wine of the sacrament. O, 
Lai'by ! Larby ! flesh of my flesh, my sorrow , 
my shame, my prodigal — my son. , 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 












THE BLIND MOTHER. 


I. 

The V ale of Newlands lay green in the morn- 
ing sunlight ; the river that ran through its 
lowest bed sparkled with purple and amber ; 
the leaves prattled low in the light breeze that 
soughed through the rushes and the long grass ; 
the hills rose sheer and white to the smooth 
blue lake of the sky, where only one fleecy 
cloud floated languidly across from peak to 
peak. Out of unseen places came the bleating 
of sheep and the rumble of distant cataracts, 
and above the dull thud of tumbling waters far 
away was the thin carolling of birds overhead. 

But the air was alive with yet sweeter sounds. 
On the breast of the fell that lies over against 
Cat Bell a procession of children walked, and 
sang, and chattered, and laughed. It was St. 


128 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


Peter’s Day, and they were rush-bearing ; little 
ones of all ages, from the comely girl of four- 
teen, just ripening into maidenhood, who walked 
last, to the sweet hoy of four in the pinafore 
braided with epaulettes, who strode along gal- 
lantly in front. Most of the little hands carried 
rushes, but some were filled with ferns ; and 
mosses, and flowers. They had assembled at 
the schoolhouse, and now, on their way to the 
church, they were making the circuit of the dale. 

They passed over the road that crosses the 
river at the head of Newlands, and turned down 
into the path that follows the bed of the valley. 
At that angle there stands a little group of 
cottages deliciously cool in their whitewash, 
nestling together under the heavy purple crag 
from which the waters of a ghyll fall into a deep 
basin that reaches to their walls. The last of 
the group is a cottage with its end to the road, 
and its open porch facing a garden shaped like 
a wedge. As the children passed this house 
an old man, gray and thin and much bent, 
stood by the gate, leaning on a staff. A collie, 
with the sheep’s dog wooden bar suspended 


THE BLIND MOTIIEB. 


129 


from its shaggy neck, lay at his feet. The hum 
of voices brought a young woman into the 
porch. She was bareheaded and wore a light 
print gown. Her face was pale and marked 
with lines. She walked cautiously, stretching 
one hand before her with an uncertain motion, 
and grasping a trailing tendril of honeysuckle 
that swept downward from the roof. Her 
eyes, which were partly inclined upwards and 
partly turned towards the procession, had a 
vague light in their bleached pupils. She was 
blind. At her side, and tugging at her other 
hand, was a child of a year and a half — a 
chubby, sunny little fellow with ruddy cheeks, 
blue eyes, and fair curly hair. Prattling, laugh- 
ing, singing snatches, and waving their rushes 
and ferns above their happy, thoughtless heads, 
the children rattled past. When they were 
gone the air was empty, as it is when the lark 
stops in its song. 

After the procession of children had passed 
the little cottage at the angle of the roads, the 
old man who leaned on his staff at the gate 

turned about and stepped to the porch. 

9 


130 


THE BLIND MOTHER . 


u Did the boy see them ? — did he see the 
children ? ” said the young woman who held 
the child by the hand. 

“ I mak’ na doot,” said the old man. 

He stooped to the little one and held out one 
long withered finger. The soft baby hand 
closed on it instantly. 

“ Did he laugh ? I thought he laughed/’ 
said the young woman. 

A bright smile played on her lips. 

“ May be so, lass.” 

“Ralphie has never seen the children be- 
fore, father. Didn’t he look frightened — just 
a little bit frightened — at first, you know ? I 
thought he crept behind my gown.” 

u Maybe, maybe.” 

The little one had dropped the hand of his 
young mother, and, still holding the bony fin- 
ger of his grandfather, he toddled beside him 
into the house. 

Very cool and sweet was the kitchen, with 
whitewashed walls and hard earthen floor. A 
table and a settle stood by the window, and a 
dresser that was an armory of bright pewter 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


131 


dishes, trenchers, and piggins, crossed the op- 
posite wall. 

“ Nay, but sista here, laal lad,” said the old 
man, and he dived into a great pocket at his 
side. 

“ Have you brought it ? Is it the kitten ? 
Oh, dear, let the boy see it ! ” 

A kitten came out of the old man’s pocket, 
and was set down on the rug at the hearth. 
The timid creature sat dazed, then raised itself 
on its hind legs and mewed. 

“ Where’s Ralphie ? Is he watching it, 
father. What is he doing ? ” 

The little one had dropped on hands and 
knees before the kitten, and was gazing up 
into its face. 

The mother leaned over him with a face 
that would have beamed with sunshine if the 
sun of sight had not been missing. 

“ Is he looking ? Doesn’t he want to cod- 
dle it ? ” 

The little chap had pushed his nose close to 
the nose of the kitten, and was prattling to it 
in various inarticulate noises. 


132 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


“ Boo — loo — lal-la — mama.” 

“ Isn’t he a darling, father ? ” 

“It’s a winsome wee thing,” said the old 
man, still standing with drooping head, over 
the group on the hearth. 

The mother’s face saddened, and she turned 
away. Then from the opposite side of the 
kitchen, where she was making pretence to 
take plates from a plate-rack, there came the 
sound of suppressed weeping. The old man’s 
eyes followed her. 

u Nay, lass ; let’s have a sup of broth,” he 
said, in a tone that carried another message. 

The young woman put plates and a howl of 
broth on the table. 

“ To think that I can never see my own 
child, and everybody else can see him ! ” she 
said, and then there was another bout of tears. 

The charcoal-burner supped at his broth in 
silence. A glistening bead rolled slowly down 
his wizened cheek : and the interview on the 
hearth went on without interruption : 

“ Mew — mew — mew. Boo — loo — lal-la — 


mama. 


THE BLIND MOTHEB. 


133 


The child made efforts to drag himself to his 
feet by laying hold of the old man’s trousers. 

“ Nay, laddie/’ said the old man, “ mind my 
claes — they’ll dirty thy bran-new brat for 
thee.” 

“ Is he growing, father ? ” said the girl. 
u Growing ? — amain.” 

“ And his eyes — are they changing color ? — 
going brown ? Children’s eyes do, you know.” 
“ Maybe — I’ll not be for saying nay.” 
u Is he — is he very like me, father ? ” 

“ Nay — well — nay — I’s fancying I see sum- 
mat of the stranger in the laal chap at whiles.” 
The young mother turned her head aside. 
###### 

The old man’s name was Matthew Fisher ; 
hut the folks of the countryside called him 
Laird Fisher. This dubious dignity came of 
the circumstance that he had been the holder 
of an absolute royalty in a few acres of land 
under Hindscarth. The royalty had been 
many generations in his family. His grand- 
father had set store by it. When the Lord of 
the Manor had worked the copper pits at the 


134 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


foot of the Eal Crags, he had tried to possess 
himself of the* royalties of the Fishers. But 
the , present families resisted the aristocrat. 
Luke Fisher believed there was a fortune under 
his feet, and he meant to try his luck on his 
holding some day. That day never came. 
His son, Mark Fisher, carried on the tradition, 
hut made no effort to unearth the fortune. 
They were a cool, silent, low, and stubborn 
race. Matthew Fisher followed his father and 
his grandfather, and inherited the family 
pride. All these years the tenders of the Lord 
of the Manor were ignored, and the Fishers en- 
joyed their title of courtesy or badinage. Mat- 
thew married, and had one daughter called 
Mercy. He farmed his few acres with poor re- 
sults. The ground was good enough, but Mat- 
thew was living under the shadow of the family 
tradition. One day — it was Sunday morning, 
and the sun shone brightly — he was rambling 
by the Po Bett that rises on Hindscarth, and 
passed through his land, when his eyes glanced 
over a glittering stone that lay among the peb- 
bles at the bottom of the stream. It was ore, 


THE BLIND MOTHEB. 


135 


good full ore, and on the very surface. Then 
the Laird sank a shaft, and all his earnings with 
it, in an attempt to procure iron or copper. 
The dalespeople derided him, but he held si- 
lently on his way. 

“ How dusta find the cobbles to-day — any 
softer ? ” they would say in passing. 

“ As soft as the hearts of most folk,” he 
would answer ; and then add in a murmur, 
“ and maybe a vast harder nor their heads.” 

The undeceiving came at length, and then 
the Laird Fisher was old and poor. His wife 
died broken-hearted. After that the Laird 
never rallied. The shaft was left unworked, 
and the holding lay fallow. Laird Fisher took 
wage from the Lord of the Manor to burn char- 
coal in the wood. The breezy irony of the 
dalesfolk did not spare the old man’s bent head. 
There was a rhyme current in the vale which 
ran — 

“ There’s t’auld laird, and t’ young laird, and t’laird 
among t’barns, 

If iver there comes another laird, we’ll hang him 
up by farms.” 


136 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


A second man came to Matthew’s abandoned 
workings. He put money into it and skill and 
knowledge, struck a vein, and began to realize 
a fortune. The only thing he did for the old 
Laird was to make him his banksman at a pound 
a week — the only thing save one thing, and 
that is the beginning of this story. 

The man’s name was Hugh Ritson. He was 
the second son of a Cumbrian statesman in a 
neighboring valley, was seven-and-twenty, and 
had been brought up as a mining engineer, first 
at Cleaton Moor and afterwards at the College 
in Jerman Street. When he returned to Cum- 
berland and bought the old Laird’s holding 
he saw something of the old Laird’s daughter. 
He remembered Mercy as a pretty prattling 
thing of ten or eleven. She was now a girl of 
eighteen, with a simple face, a timid manner, 
and an air that was neither that of a woman 
nor of a child. Her mother was lately dead, 
her father spent most of his days on the fell 
(some of his nights also when the charcoal was 
burning), and she was much alone. Hugh 
Ritson liked her sweet face, her gentle replies, 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


137 


and her few simple questions. It is unneces- 
sary to go farther. The girl gave herself up 
to him with her whole heart and soul. Then 
he married another woman. 

The wife was the daughter of the Vicar, 
Parson Christian. Her name was Greta : she 
was beautiful to look upon — a girl of spirit and 
character. Greta knew nothing of Hugh 
Ritson’s intercourse with Mercy until after he 
had become her husband. Mercy was then in 
the depth of her trouble, and Greta had gone 
to comfort her. Down to that hour, though 
idle tongues had wagged, no one had lit on 
Mercy’s lover, and not even in her fear had she 
confessed. Greta told her that it was brave 
and beautiful to shield her friend, but he was 
unworthy of her friendship or he would stand 
by her side — who was he ? It was a trying 
moment. Greta urged and pleaded and coaxed, 
and Mercy trembled and stammered and was 
silent. The truth came out at last, and from 
that moment the love between the two women 
was like the love of David and Jonathan. 
Hugh Ritson was compelled to stand apart and 


138 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


witness it. He could not recognize it ; he dare 
not ojjpose it ; he could only drop his head and 
hold his tongue. It was coals of fire on his 
head from both sides. The women never 
afterwards mentioned him to each other, and 
yet somehow — by some paradox of love — he 
was the bond between them. 

A month before the birth of the child, Mercy 
became blind. This happened suddenly and 
without much warning. A little cold in the 
eyes, a little redness around them and a total 
eclipse of sight. If such a disaster had befallen 
a married wife, looking forward to a happy 
motherhood, death itself might have seemed a 
doom more kind. But Mercy took it with a 
sombre quietness. She was even heard to say 
that it was just as well. These startling words, 
repeated to Greta, just told her something of 
the mystery and misery of Mercy’s state. But 
their full meaning, the whole depth of the 
shame they came from, were only revealed on 
the morning after the night on which Mercy’s 
child was horn. 

They were in the room upstairs, where Mercy 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


139 


herself had been born less than nineteen years 
before : a little chamber with the low eaves and 
the open roof rising to the ridge : a peaceful 
place with its whitewashed walls and the odor 
of clean linen. On the pillow of the bed lay 
the simple face of the girl-mother, with its fair 
hair hanging loose and its blind eyes closed. 
Mercy had just awakened from the first deep 
sleep that comes after all is over, and the long 
fingers of one of her thin hands were plucking 
at the white counterpane. In a nervous voice 
she began to speak. Where was Mrs. Bitson ? 
Greta answered that she was there, and the 
baby was sleeping on her knee. Anybody 
else? No, nobody else. Was it morning? 
Yes, it was eight in the morning, and her 
father, who had not been to bed, had eaten his 
breakfast, and lit his pipe and gone to work. 
Was the day fine ? Very fine. And the sun 
shining? Yes, shining beautifully. Was the 
blind down ? Yes, the little white blind was 
down. Then all the room was full of that soft 
light ? 0, yes, full of it. Except in the corner 

by the wash-stand ? W ell, except in the corner. 


140 


THE BLIND MOTHEB. 


Was the wash-stand still there? Why, yes, it 
was still there. And mother’s picture on the 
wall above it ? 0, dear, yes. And the chest 

of drawers near the door with the bits of spark- 
ling lead ore on top ? Of course. And the 
texts pinned on to the wall-paper : “ Come 

unto Me” — eh? Yes, they were all there. 
Then everything was just the same ? 0, yes, 

everything the same. 

“ The same,” cried Mercy, “ everything the 
same, but, 0 Lord Jesus, how different ! ” 

The child was awakened by the shrill sound 
of her voice, and it began to whimper, and 
Greta to hush it, swaying it on her knee, and 
calling it by a score of pretty names. Mercy 
raised her head a moment and listened, then 
fell back to the pillow and said, “ How glad I 
am I’m blind ? ” 

“ Good gracious, Mercy, what are you say- 
ing ! ” said Greta. 

“ I’m glad I can’t see it.” 

“ Mercy ! ” 

u Ah, you’re different, Mrs. Ritson. I was 
thinking of that last night. When your time 


THE BLIND MOTUEB. 


141 


comes perhaps you’ll be afraid you’ll die, but 
you’ll never be afraid you’ll not. And you’ll 
say to yourself, ‘ It will be over soon, and then 
what joy ! ’ That wasn’t my case. When I 
was at the worst I could only think, ‘It’s 
dreadful now, but 0, to-morrow all the world 
will be different.’ ” 

One poor little day changed all this. To- 
wards sunset the child had to he given the 
breast for the first time. Ah ! that mystery of 
life, that mystery of motherhood, what are the 
accidents of social law, the big conventions of 
virtue and vice, of honor and disgrace, before 
the touch of the spreading fingers of a babe as 
they fasten on the mother’s breast ! Mercy 
thought no more of her shame. She had her 
baby for it, at all events. The world was not 
utterly desolate. After all, God was very 
good ! 

Then came a great longing for sight. She 
only wished to see her child. That was all. 
W asn’t it hard that a mother had never seen 
her own baby ? In her darkness she would 
feel its little nose as it lay asleep beside her, 


142 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


and let her hand play around its mouth and 
over its eyes and about its ears. Her touch 
passed over the little one like a look. It was 
almost as if there were sight in the tips of her 
fingers. 

The child lived to be six months old, and 
still Mercy had not seen him ; a year, and yet 
she had no hope. Then Greta, in pity of the 
yearning gaze of the blind girl-face whenever 
she came and kissed the boy and said how 
bonny he was, sent to Liverpool for a doctor, 
that at least they might know for a certainty 
if Mercy’s sight was gone forever. The 
doctor came. Yes, there was hope. The mis- 
chief was cataract on both eyes. Sight might 
return, but an operation would be necessary. 
That could not, however, be performed imme- 
diately. He would come again in a month, 
and a colleague with him, and meantime the 
eyes must be bathed constantly in a liquid 
which they would send for the purpose. 

At first Mercy was beside herself with de- 
light. She plucked up the boy and kissed and 
kissed him. The whole day long she sang all 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


143 


over the house like a liberated bird. Her face, 
though it was blind, was like sunshine, for the 
joyous mouth smiled like eyes. Then suddenly 
there came a change. She plucked up the boy 
and kissed him still, but she did not sing and 
she did not smile. A heavy thought had come 
to her. Ah ! if she should die under the 
doctor’s hands ! Was it not better to live in 
blindness and keep her boy than to try to see 
him and so lose him altogether ? Thus it was 
with her on St. Peter’s Hay, when the children 
of the dale went by at their rush-bearing. 

# # # * * 

/ There was the faint sound of a footstep out- 
side. 

“ Hark,” said Mercy, half rising from the 
sconce. “ It’s Mrs. Ritson’s foot.” 

The men listened. u Nay, lass, there’s no 
foot,” said Gubblum. 

“ Yes, she’s on the road,” said Mercy. Her 
face showed that pathetic tension of the other 
senses which is peculiar to the blind. A mo- 
ment later Greta stepped into the cottage, with 
a letter in her hand. “ Good-morning, Mat- 


144 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


thew; I have news for you, Mercy. The 
doctors are coming to-day.” 

Mercy’s face fell perceptibly. The old man’s 
head dropped lower. 

“ There, don’t be afraid,” said Greta, touch- 
ing her hand caressingly. “ It will soon he 
over. The doctors didn’t hurt you before, did 
they?” 

“ No, but this time it will be the operation,” 
said Mercy. There was a tremor in her voice. 

Greta had lifted the child from the sconce. 
The little fellow cooed close to her ear ; and 
babbled his inarticulate nothings. 

u Only think, when it’s all over you will be 
able to see your darling Ralphie for the first 
time ! ” 

Mercy’s sightless face brightened. “ Oh, 
yes,” she said, “ and watch him play, and see 
him spin his tops and chase the butterflies. 
Oh, that will be very good ! ” 

“ Dusta say to-day, Mistress Ritson ? ” asked 
Matthew, the big drops standing in his eyes. 

a Yes, Matthew ; I will stay to see it over, 
and mind baby, and help a little.” 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


145 


Mercy took the lifctle one from Greta’s arms 
and cried over it, and laughed over it, and then 
cried and laughed again. “ Mamma and 
Ralphie shall play together in the garden, dar- 
ling ; and Ralphie shall see the horses — and 
the flowers — and the birdies — and mamma — 

yes, mamma shall see Ralphie ” 

10 


i 


146 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


II. 

Two hours later the doctors arrived. They 
looked at Mercy’s eyes, and were satisfied that 
the time was ripe for the operation. At the 
sound of their voices, Mercy trembled and 
turned livid. By a maternal instinct she picked 
up the child, who was toddling about the floor, 
and clasped it to her bosom. The little one 
opened wide his blue eyes at sight of the 
strangers, and the prattling tongue became 
quiet. 

“ Take her to her room, and let her lie on 
the bed,” said one of the doctors to Greta. 

A sudden terror seized the young mother. 
“ No, no, no ! ” she said, in an indescribable 
accent, and the child cried a little from the 
pressure to her breast. 

“ Come, Mercy, dear, be brave for your boy’s 
sake,” said Greta. 


THE BLIND MOTH Eli. 


147 


“ Listen to me/’ said the doctor, quietly but 
firmly. “ You are now quite blind, and you 
have been in total darkness for a year and a 
half. W e may be able to restore your sight by 
giving you a few minutes’ pain. Will you not 
bear it ? ” 

Mercy sobbed, and kissed the child passion- 
ately. 

u Just think, it is quite certain that without 
an operation you will never regain your sight,” 
continued the doctor. “ You have nothing to 
lose, and everything to gain. Are you satis- 
fied? Come, go away to your room quietly.” 

“ Oh, oh, oh ! ” sobbed Mercy. 

“ Just imagine, only a few minutes’ pain, 
and even of that you will scarcely be conscious. 
Before you know what is doing it will be done.” 

Mercy clung closer to her child, and kissed 
it again and yet more fervently. 

The doctors turned to each other. “ Strange 
vanity ! ” muttered the one who had not spoken 
before. “ Her eyes are useless, and yet she is 
afraid she may lose them.” 

Mercy’s quick ears caught the whispered 


148 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


words. “It is not that/’ she said, passion- 
ately. 

“ No, gentlemen,” said Greta, “ you have 
mistaken her thought. Tell her she runs no 
danger of her life.” 

The doctors smiled and laughed a little. 
“ Oh, that’s it, eh ? W ell, we can tell her that 
with certainty.” 

Then there was another interchange of half- 
amused glances. 

“ Ah, we that be men, sirs, don’t know the 
depth and tenderness of a mother’s heart,” said 
old Matthew. And Mercy turned towards him 
a face that was full of gratitude. Greta took 
the child out of her arms and hushed it to 
sleep in another room. Then she brought it 
back and put it in its cradle that stood in the 
ingle. 

“ Come, Mercy,” she said, “ for the sake of 
your boy.” And Mercy permitted herself to 
be led from the kitchen. 

“ So there will be no danger,” she said. “ I 
shall not leave my hoy. Who said that ? The 
doctor ? Oh, good gracious, it’s nothing. Only 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


149 


think, I shall live to see him grow to he a great 
lad.” 

Her whole face was now radiant. 

“ It will be nothing. Oh, no, it will be noth- 
ing. How silly it was to think that he would 
live on, and grow up, and be a man, and I lie 
cold in the churchyard — and me his mother ! 
That was very childish, wasn’t it ? But, then, 
I have been so childish since Ralphie came.” 

u There, lie and be quiet, and it will soon be 
over,” said Greta. 

“ Let me kiss him first. Do let me kiss him ! 
Only once. You know it’s a great risk after 
all. And if he grew up — and I wasn’t here — 
if — if ” 

“ There, dear Mercy, you must not cry again. 
It inflames your eyes, and that can’t be good 
for the doctors.” 

“ No, no, I won’t cry. You are very good ; 
everybody is very good. Only let me kiss my 
little Ralphie — just for the last.” 

Greta led her back to the side of the cot, 
and she spread herself over it with outstretched 
arms, as the mother-bird poises with outstretched 


150 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


wings over her brood. Then she rose, and her 
face was peaceful and resigned. 

The Laird Fisher sat down before the kitchen 
fire, with one arm on the cradle head. Parson 
Christian stood beside him. The old charcoal- 
burner wept in silence, and the good Parson’s 
voice was too thick for the words of comfort 
that rose to his lips. 

The doctors followed into the bedroom. 
Mercy was lying tranquilly on her bed. Her 
countenance was without expression. She was 
busy with her own thoughts. Greta stood by 
the bedside ; anxiety was written in every line 
of her beautiful, brave face. 

“ We must give her the gas,” said one of the 
doctors, addressing the other. 

Mercy’s features twitched. 

“ Who said that ? ” she asked nervously. 

“ My child, you must be quiet,” said the 
doctor in a tone of authority. 

“ Yes, I will be quiet, very quiet ; only don’t 
make me unconscious,” she said. u Never mind 
me ; I will not cry. No ; if you hurt me I will 
not cry out. I will not stir. I will do every- 


TIIE BLIND MOTHEB. 


151 


thing you ask. And you shall say how quiet 
I have been. Only don’t let me be in- 
sensible.” 

The doctors consulted together aside, and in 
whispers. 

“ Who spoke about the gas ? It wasn’t you, 
Mrs. Ritson, was it ? ” 

“ You must do as the doctors wish, dear,” 
said Greta in a caressing voice. 

“ Oh, I will he very good. I will do every 
little thing. Yes, and I will he so brave. I 
am a little childish sometimes, but I can be 
brave, can’t I ? ” 

The doctors returned to the bedside. 

“ V ery well, we will not use the gas,” said 
one. “ You are a brave little woman, after all. 
There, be still, — very still.” 

One of the doctors was tearing linen into 
strips for bandages, while the other fixed Mercy’s 
head to suit the light. 

There was a faint sound from the kitchen. 
“Wait,” said Mercy. “That is father — lie’s 
crying. Tell him not to cry. Say it’s noth- 
ing.” 


152 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


She laughed a weak little laugh. 

“ Tlier e, he will hear that ; go and say it was 
I who laughed.” 

Greta left the room on tiptoe. Old Matthew 
was still sitting over a dying fire, gently rock- 
ing the sleeping child. 

When Greta returned to the bedroom, Mercy 
called her, and said, very softly, “ Let me hold 
your hand, Greta — may I say Greta ? — there,” 
and her fingers closed on Greta’s with a convul- 
sive grasp. 

The operation began. Mercy held her breath. 
She had the stubborn north-country blood in 
her. Once only a sigh escaped. There was a 
dead silence. 

In two or three minutes the doctor said, 
“ Just another minute, and all will he over.” 

At the next instant Greta felt her hand held 
with a grasp of iron. 

“ Doctor, doctor, I can see you,” cried Mercy, 
and her words came in gusts. 

u Be quiet,” said the doctor in a stern voice. 
In half a minute more the linen bandages were 
being wrapped tightly over Mercy’s eyes. 


TIIE BLIND MO TI1EB. 


153 


“ Doctor, dear doctor, let me see my boy ! ” 
cried Mercy. 

“ Be quiet, I say,” said the doctor again. 

“ Dear doctor, my dear doctor, only one peep 
— one little peep. I saw your face — let me see 
my Ralphie’s.” 

“ Not yet, it is not safe.” 

“ But only for a moment. Don’t put the 
bandage on for one moment. Just think, doctor, 
I have never seen my boy ; I’ve seen other 
people’s children, but never once my own, own 
darling. Oh, dear doctor ” 

“ You are exciting yourself. Listen to me : 
if you don’t behave yourself now you may never 
see your child.” 

“ Yes, yes, I will behave myself ; I will be 
very good. Only don’t shut me up in darkness 
again until I see my boy. Greta, bring him to 
me. Listen, I hear his breathing. Go for my 
darling ! The kind doctor won’t be angry with 
you. Tell him that if I see my child it will 
cure me. I know it will.” 

Greta’s eyes were swimming in tears. 

“Rest quiet, Mercy. Everything may be 


154 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


lost if you disturb yourself now, my dear.” 

The doctors were wrapping bandage over 
bandage, and fixing them firmly at the back of 
their patient’s head. 

“ Now listen again,” said one of them. 
“ This bandage must be kept over your eyes for 
a week.” 

“A week — a whole week? Oh, doctor, 
you might as well say forever.” 

“ I say a week. And if you should ever 
remove it ” 

“ Not for an instant ? Not raise it a very 
little ? ” 

“ If you ever remove it for an instant, or 
raise it ever so little, you will assuredly lose 
your sight forever. Remember that.” 

“ Oh, doctor, it is terrible. Why did you 
not tell me so before ? Oh this is worse than 
blindness ! Think of the temptation, and I 
have never seen my boy ! ” 

The doctor had fixed the bandage, and his 
voice was less stern, but no less resolute. 

“You must obey me,” he said ; “I will 
come again this day week, and then you shall 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


155 


see your child, and your father, and this 
young lady, and everybody. But mind, if 
you don’t obey me, you will never see any- 
thing. You will have one glance of your 
little hoy, and then be blind forever, or per- 
haps — yes, perhaps die” 

Mercy lay quiet for a moment. Then she 
said, in a low voice : 

“ Dear doctor, you must forgive me. I am 
very wilful, and I promised to be so good. I 
will not touch the bandage. No, for the sake 
of my little boy, I will never, never touch it. 
You shall come yourself and take it off, and 
then I shall see him.” 

The doctors went away. Greta remained 
all that night in the cottage. 

u You are happy now, Mercy ? ” said Greta. 
u Oh yes,” said Mercy. “ Just think, only 
a week ! And he must he so beautiful by this 
time.” 

When Greta took the child to her at sunset, 
there was an ineffable joy in her pale face, and 
next morning, when Greta awoke, Mercy was 
singing softly to herself in the sunrise. 


156 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


III. 

Greta stayed with Mercy until noon that 
day, begging, entreating, and finally com- 
manding her to lie quiet in bed, while she her- 
self dressed and fed the child, and cooked and 
cleaned, in spite of the Laird Fisher’s protesta- 
tions. When all was done, and the old char- 
coal-burner had gone out on the hills, Greta 
picked up the little fellow in her arms and 
went to Mercy’s room. Mercy was alert to 
every sound, and in an instant was sitting up 
in bed. Her face beamed, her parted lips 
smiled, her delicate fingers plucked nervously 
at the counterpane. 

“ How brightsome it is to-day, Greta,” she 
said. “ I’m sure the sun must be shining.” 

The window was open, and a soft breeze 
floated through the sun’s rays into the room. 
Mercy inclined her head aside, and added, 


THE BLIND MOTHEB. 


157 


“ All, you young rogue, you ; you are there, 
are you ? Give him to me, the rascal.” The 
rogue was set down in his mother’s arms, and 
she proceeded to punish his rascality with a 
shower of kisses. “How bonny his cheeks 
must be ; they will be just like two ripe apples,” 
and forthwith there fell another shower of 
kisses. Then she babbled over the little one, 
and lisped, and stammered, and nodded her 
head in his face, and blew little puffs of breath 
into his hair, and tickled him until he laughed 
and crowed and rolled and threw up his legs ; 
and then she kissed his limbs and extremities 
in a way that mothers have, and finally impris- 
oned one of his feet by putting it ankle-deep 
into her mouth. “ W ould you ever think a 
foot could be so tiny, Greta ? ” she said. And 
the little one plunged about and clambered 
laboriously up its mother’s breast, and more 
than once plucked at the white bandage about 
her head. “ No, no, Ralphie must not touch,” 
said Mercy with sudden gravity. “ Only think, 
Ralphie pet, one week — only one — nay, less — 
only six days now, and then — oh, then ! ” 


158 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


A long liug, and the little fellow’s boisterous 
protest against the convulsive pressure abridged 
the mother’s prophecy. 

All at once Mercy’s manner changed. She 
turned towards Greta, and said, u I will not 
touch the bandage, no, never ; hut if Ralphie 
tugged at it, and it fell — would that be break- 
ing my promise ? ” 

Greta saw what was in her heart. 

“ I’m afraid it would, dear,” she said, but 
there was a tremor in her voice. 

Mercy sighed audibly. 

“ J ust think, it would be only Ralphie. The 
kind doctors could not be angry with my little 
child. I would say, 6 It was the boy,’ and 
they would smile and say, ‘ Ah, that is dif- 
ferent.’ ” 

“ Give me the little one,” said Greta with 
emotion. 

Mercy drew the child closer, and there was a 
pause. 

“ I was very wrong, Greta,” she said in a 
low tone. “ Oh ! you would not think what a 
fearful thing came into my mind a minute ago. 


THE BLIND MOTHEB. 


159 


Take my Ralphie. Just imagine, my own 
innocent baby tempted me.” 

As Greta reached across the bed to lift the 
child out of his mother’s lap, the little fellow 
was struggling to communicate, by help of a 
limited vocabulary, some wondrous intelligence 
of recent events that somewhat overshadowed 
his little existence. “ Puss — dat,” many times 
repeated, was further explained by one chubby 
forefinger with its diminutive finger-nail pointed 
to the fat back of the other hand. 

“ He means that the little cat has scratched 
him,” said Greta, “ but bless the mite, he is 
pointing to the wrong hand.” 

cc Puss — dat,” continued the child, and peered 
up into his mother’s sightless face. Mercy was 
all tears in an instant. She had borne yester- 
day’s operation without a groan, but now the 
scratch on her child’s hand went to her heart 
like a stab. 

“ Lie quiet, Mercy,” said Greta ; “ it will be 
gone to-morrow.” 

“ Go-on,” echoed the little chap, and pointed 
out at the window. 


160 


THE BLIND MOTHEB. 


“ The darling, how he picks up every word ! ” 
said Greta. 

“ He means the horse/’ explained Mercy. 

“ Go-on — man — go-on/’ prattled the little 
one, with a child’s indifference to all conversa- 
tion except his own. 

“ Bless the love, he must remember the 
doctor and his horse,” said Greta. 

Mercy was putting her lips to the scratch on 
the little hand. 

“ Oh, Greta, I am very childish ; but a 
mother’s heart melts like butter.” 

“ Batter,” echoed the child, and wriggled 
out of Greta’s arms to the ground, where he 
forthwith clambered on to the stool, and pos- 
sessed himself of a slice of bread which lay on 
the table at the bedside. Then the fair curly 
head disappeared like a glint of sunlight through 
the door to the kitchen. 

“ What shall I care if other mothers see my 
child? I shall see him too,” said Mercy, and 
she sighed. “ Yes,” she added, softly, “ his 
hands and his eyes and his feet, and his soft 
hair.” 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


161 


66 Try to sleep an hour or two, dear,” said 
Greta, u and then perhaps you may get up this 
afternoon — onl y perhaps, you know, but we’ll 
see.” 

“ Yes, Greta, yes. How kind you are.” 

“ You will be kinder to me some day,” said 
Greta very tenderly. 

u How very selfish I am. But then it is so 
hard not to be selfish when you are a mother. 
Only fancy, I never think of myself as Mercy 
now. No, never. I’m just Ralphie’s mamma. 
When Ralphie came, Mercy must have died in 
some way. That’s very silly, isn’t it ? Only it 
does seem true.” 

“ Man — go-on — batter,” was heard from the 
kitchen, mingled with the patter of tiny feet. 

“ Listen to him. How tricksome he is ! And 
you should hear him cry ( Oh ! ’ You would 
say, * That child has had an eye knocked out.’ 
And then, in a minute, behold he is laughing 
once more. There, I’m selfish again ; but I 
will make up for it some day, if God is good.” 

“ Yes, Mercy, He is good,” said Greta. 

Her arm rested on the door-jamb, and her 

11 


102 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


head dropped on to it ; her eyes swam. Did it 
seem at that moment as if God had been very 
good to these two women ? 

“ Greta/’ said Mercy, and her voice fell to a 
whisper, “ do you think Ralphie is like — any- 
body?” 

“ Yes, dear, he is like you.” 

There was a pause. Then Mercy’s hand 
strayed from under the bedclothes and plucked 
at Greta’s gown. 

“ Do you think,” she asked, in a voice all 
hut inaudible, “ that father knows who it 
is?” 

“I cannot say — we have never told him.” 

“ Nor I — he never asked, never once — only, 
you know, he gave up his work at the mine, 
and went back to the charcoal-pit when Ralphie 
came. But he never said a word.” 

Greta did not answer. At that moment the 
bedroom door was pushed open with a little 
lordly bang, and the great wee man entered 
with his piece of bread insecurely on one prong 
of a fork. 

“Toas’,” he explained complacently, “tons’,” 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


163 


and walked up to the empty grate and stretched 
his arm over the fender at the cold bars. 

“ Why, there’s no fire for toast, you darling 
goose,” said Greta, catching him in her arms, 
much to his masculine vexation. 

Mercy had risen on an elbow, and her face 
was full of the yearning of the blind. Then she 
lay back. 

“ Never mind,” she said to herself in a fal- 
tering voice, “ let me lie quiet and think of all 
his pretty ways.” 


164 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


IV. 


Greta returned home towards noon, laughing 
and crying a little to herself as she walked, for 
she was full of a dear delicious envy. She was 
thinking that she could take all the shame and 
all the pain for all the joy of Mercy’s mother- 
hood. 

God had given Greta no children. 

Hugh Ritson came in to their early dinner 
and she told him how things went at the cot- 
tage of the old Laird Fisher. Only once before 
had she mentioned Mercy or the child, and he 
looked confused and awkward. After the meal 
was over he tried to say something which had 
been on his mind for weeks. 

“ But if anything should happen after all,” 
he began, u and Mercy should not recover — or 
if she should ever want to go anywhere — might 
we not take — would you mind, Greta — I mean 


TUB BLIND MOTHEB. 


165 


it might even help her — you see/’ he said, 
breaking down nearly, “ there is the child, it’s 
a sort of duty, you know — and then a good 
home and upbringing ” 

“ Don’t tempt me,” said Greta. “I’ve 
thought of it a hundred times.” 

About five o’clock the same evening a knock 
came to the door, and old Laird Fisher entered. 
His manner was more than usually solemn and 
constrained. 

“ I’s coom’t to say as ma lass’s wee thing is 
taken badly,” she said, “ and rayder suddent.” 

Greta rose from her seat and put on her hat 
and cloak. She was hastening down the road 
while the charcoal-burner was still standing in 
the middle of the floor. 

When Greta reached the old charcoal-burner’s 
cottage, the little one was lying in a drowsy 
state in Mercy’s arms. Its breathing seemed 
difficult ; sometimes it started in terror ; it was 
feverish and suffered thirst. The mother’s 
wistful face was bent down on it with an inde- 
scribable expression. There were only the 
trembling lips to tell of the sharp struggle that 


166 


THE BLIND MOTHER . 


was going on within. But the yearning for a 
sight of the little flushed countenance, the tear- 
less appeal for but one glimpse of the drowsy 
little eyes, the half -articulate cry of a mother’s 
heart against the fate that made the child she 
had suckled at her breast a stranger, whose very 
features she might not know — all this was writ- 
ten in that blind face. 

“ Is he pale ? ” said Mercy. (C Is he sleep- 
ing? He does not talk now, but only starts 
and cries, and sometimes coughs.” 

“ When did this begin ? ” asked Greta. 

a Towards four o’clock. He had bean play- 
ing, and I noticed that he breathed heavily, 
and then? he came to me to be nursed. Is he 
awake now ? Listen.” 

The little one in its restless drowsiness was 
muttering faintly, “ Man — go-on — batter — 
toas’.” 

“The darling is talking in his sleep, isn’t 
he? ” said Mercy. 

Then there was a ringing, brassy cough. 

“ It is croup,” thought Greta. 

She closed the window, lit a fire, placed the 


THE BLIND MOTHEB. 


167 


kettle so that the steam might enter the room, 
then wrung flannels out of hot water, and 
wrapped them about the child’s neck. She 
stayed all that night at the cottage, and sat up 
with the little one and nursed it. Mercy could 
not be persuaded to go to bed, but she was 
very quiet. It had not yet taken hold of her 
that the child was seriously ill. He was drowsy 
and a little feverish, his pulse beat fast and 
he coughed hard sometimes, but he would be 
better in the morning. Oh yes, he would soon 
be well again, and tearing up the flowers in 
the garden. 

Towards midnight the pulse fell rapidly, the 
breathing became quieter, and the whole nature 
seemed to sink. Mercy listened with her ear 
bent down at the child’s mouth, and a smile of 
ineffable joy spread itself over her face. 

“ Bless him, he is sleeping so calmly,” she 
said. 

Greta did not answer. 

“ The * puss ’ and the ‘ man ’ don’t darken 
his little life so much now,” continued Mercy 
cheerily. 


168 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


u No, dear/’ said Greta, in as strong a voice 
as she could summon. 

“ All will be well with my darling boy soon, 
will it not ? ” 

u Yes, dear,” said Greta, with a struggle. 

Happily Mercy could not read the other 
answer in her face. 

Mercy had put her sensitive fingers on the 
child’s nose, and was touching him lightly 
about the mouth. 

cc Greta,” she said in a startled whisper, 
cc does he look pinched ? ” 

u A little,” said Greta quietly. 

u And his skin — is it cold and clammy ? ” 

“ We must give him another hot flannel,” 
said Greta. 

Mercy sat at the bedside, and said nothing 
for an hour. Then all at once, and in a strange 
harsh voice, she said : 

u I wish God had not made Ralphie so win- 
some.” 

Greta started at the words, but made no 
answer. 

The daylight came early. As the first gleams 


THE BLIND MOTUEB. 


169 


of gray light came in at the window, Greta 
turned to where Mercy sat in silence. It was 
a sad face that she saw in the mingled yellow 
light of the dying lamp and the gray of the 
dawn. 

Mercy spoke again. 

u Greta, do you remember what Mistress 
Branthet said when her baby died last back end 
gone twelvemonth ? ” 

Greta looked up quickly at the bandaged 
eyes. 

“ What ? ” she asked. 

66 W ell, Parson Christian tried to comfort her 
and said, c Your baby is now an angel in Para- 
dise/ and she turned on him with 6 Sliaf on your 
angels — I want none on’ em — I want my little 

girl-’” 

Mercy’s voice broke into a sob. 

Towards ten o’clock the doctor came. He 
had been detained. Very sorry to disoblige 
Mrs. Kitson, but fact was old Mr. de Broad- 
thwaite had an attack of lumbago, complicated 
by a bout of toothache, and everybody knew 
he was most exacting. Young person’s baby 


170 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


ill ? Feverish, restless, starts in its sleep, and 
cough? — Ah, croupy cough — yes, croup, true 
croup, not spasmodic. Let him see, how old ? 
A year and a half? Ah, bad, very. Most 
frequent in second year of infancy. Dangerous, 
highly so. Forms a membrane that occludes 
air passages. Often ends in convulsions, and 
child suffocates. Sad, very. Let him see again. 
How long since the attack began ? Yesterday 
at four. Ah, far gone, far. The great man 
soon vanished, leaving behind him a harmless 
preparation of aconite and ipecacuanha. 

Mercy had heard all, and her pent-up grief 
broke out in sobs. 

“ Oh, to think I shall hear my Ralpliie no 
more, and to know his white cold face is look- 
ing up from a coffin, while other children are 
playing in the sunshine and chasing the butter- 
flies ! No, no, it cannot be ; Ood will not let 
it come to pass ; I will pray to Him and He 
will save my child. Why, He can do anything, 
and He has all the world. What is my little 
baby hoy to Him ? He will not let it be taken 
from me.” 


THE BLIND MOTHEB. 


171 


Greta’s heart was too full for speech. But 
she might weep in silence, and none there would 
know. Mercy stretched across the bed, and, 
tenderly folding the child in her arms, she lifted 
him up, and then went down on her knees. 

u Merciful Father,” she said in a childish 
voice of sweet confidence, “ this is my baby, my 
Ralphie, and I love him so dearly. You would 
never think how much I love him. But he is 
ill, and doctor says he may die. Oh, dear 
Father, only think what it would be to say, 
‘ His little face is gone.’ And then I have 
never seen him. You will not take him away 
until his mother sees him. So soon, too. Only 
five days more. Why, it is quite close. Not 
to-morrow, nor the next day, nor the next, but 
the day after that.” 

She put in many another childlike plea, and 
then rose with a smile on her pale lips and 
replaced the little one on his pillow. 

“ How patient he is,” she said. “ He can’t 
say ‘ Thank you,’ but I’m sure his eyes are 
speaking. Let me feel.” She put her finger 
lightly on the child’s lids. “ No, they are shut ; 


172 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


he must be sleeping. Oh, dear, he sleeps very 
much. Is he gaining color ? How quiet he 
is. If he would only say, 6 Mamma ! 9 How I 
wish I could see him ! ” 

She was very quiet for a while, and then 
plucked at Greta’s gown suddenly. 

“ Greta,” she said eagerly, “ something tells 
me that if I could only see Ralphie I should 
save him.” 

Greta started up in terror. “ No, no, no ; 
you must not think of it,” she said. 

“ But something whispered it. It must have 
been God Himself. You know we ought to 
obey God always.” 

“ Mercy, it was not God who said that. It 
was your own heart. You must not heed it.” 

“ I’m sure it was God,” said Mercy. “ And 
I heard it quite plain.” 

“ Mercy, my darling, think what you are say- 
ing. Think what it is you wish to do. If 
you do it you will he blind forever.” 

“ But I shall have saved my Ralphie.” 

“ No, no ; you will not.” 

“ Will he not be saved, Greta?” 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


178 


“ Only our heavenly Father knows.” 

u W ell, He whispered it in my heart. And, 
as you say, He knows best.” 

Greta was almost distraught with fear. The 
noble soul in her would not allow her to appeal 
to Mercy’s gratitude against the plea of maternal 
love. But she felt that all her happiness hung 
on that chance. If Mercy regained her sight, 
all would be well with her and hers ; but if she 
lost it the future must be a blank. 

The day wore slowly on, and the child sank 
and sank. At evening the old charcoal-burner 
returned, and went into the bedroom. He 
stood a moment and looked down at the pinched 
little face, and when the child’s eyes opened 
drowsily for a moment he put his withered 
forefinger into its palm ; but there was no 
longer a responsive clasp of the chubby hand. 

The old man’s lips quivered behind his white 
beard. 

“It were a winsome wee thing,” he said 
faintly, and then turned away. 

He left his supper untouched, and went into 
the porch. There he sat on a bench and whit- 


174 


THE BLIND MOTHER . 


tied a blackthorn stick. The sun was sinking 
over the head of the Eel Crag ; the valley lay 
deep in a purple haze ; only the bald top of Cat 
Bells stood out bright in the glory of the pass- 
ing day. A gentle breeze came up from the 
south, and the young corn chattered with its 
multitudinous tongues in the field below. The 
dog lay at the charcoal-burner’s feet, blinking 
in the sun and snapping lazily at a buzzing fly. 

The little life within was ebbing away. No 
longer racked by the ringing cough, the loud 
breathing became less frequent and more harsh. 
Mercy lifted the child from the bed, and sat 
with it before the fire. Greta saw its eyes open, 
and at the same moment she saw the lips move 
slightly, but she heard nothing. 

“ He is calling his mamma,” said Mercy, 
with her ear bent towards the child’s mouth. 

There was a silence for a long time. Mercy 
pressed the child to her breast ; its close pres- 
ence seemed to soothe her. 

Greta stood and looked down ; she saw the 
little lips move once more, but again she heard 
no sound. 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


175 


u He is calling liis mamma,” repeated Mercy 
wistfully, “ and oh, he seems such a long way 
off.” 

Once again the little lips moved. 

“ He is calling me,” said Mercy, listening 
intently ; and she grew restless and excited. 
“ He is going away. I can hear him. He is 
far off. Ralphie, Ralphie ! ” She had lifted 
the child up to her face. “ Ralphie, Ralphie ! ” 
she cried. 

u Give me the baby, Mercy,” said Greta. 

But the mother clung to it with a convulsive 
grasp. 

u Ralphie, Ralphie, Ralphie ...” 

There was a sudden flash of some white 
thing. In an instant the bandage had fallen 
from Mercy’s head, and she was peering down 
into the child’s face with wild eyes. 

“ Ralphie, Ralphie ! . . . Hugh ! ” she 
cried. 

The mother had seen her babe at last, and 
in that instant she had recognized the features 
of its father. 

At the next moment the angel of God 


176 


THE BLIND MOTHER . 


passed through that troubled house, and the 
child lay dead at the mother’s breast. 

Mercy saw it all, and her impassioned mood 
left her. She rose to her feet quietly, and 
laid the little one in the bed. There was 
never a sigh more, never a tear. Only her 
face was ashy pale, and her whitening lips 
quivered. 

“ Greta,” she said, very slowly, u good-bye ! 
All is over now.” 

She spoke of herself as if her days were 
already ended and past ; as if her own orb of 
life had been rounded by the brief span of the 
little existence that lay finished on the bed. 

“ When they come in the morning early — 
very early — and find us here, my boy and me, 
don’t let them take him away from me, Greta. 
W e should go together — yes, both together ; 
that’s only right, with Ralphie at my bosom.” 

The bandage lay at her feet. Her eyes 
were very red and heavy. Their dim light 
seemed to come from far away. 

a Only that,” she said, and her voice soft- 
ened, “ my Ralphie is in heaven.” 


THE BLIND MOTHER. 


177 


Then she hid her face in her hands, and 
cried out loud, “ But I prayed to God that I 
might see my child on earth. Oh, how I 
prayed ! And God heard my prayer and an- 
swered it — but see ! I saw him die ” 


THE END. 











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